Buckeyes recruiting buzz could be slow burn, not instant gratification
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Ohio State Recruiting Question of the Day
Is the 2022 class a bunch of smoke or do you feel like there is any reality to what the kids had been tweeting?
— Bobby (@bob_the_buckeye) November 3, 2020
This was sort of discussed here a week ago, and the pragmatic way I tried to approach the topic was viewed by some as being negative. Here’s what I wrote about the wildfire buzz being created by the Ohio State 2022 class leaders, guys like C.J. Hicks, Dasan McCullough and Bennett Christian.
In the 2022 cycle, a commitment could be the first step, not the last. Ohio State is always going to be one of the top programs with elite targets, and having boots on the ground with guys like Hicks and McCullough is opening doors across the country. That could yield some huge dividends in the next few weeks to months.
The internet is a wonderful place, but if we’re being honest, it’s cultivated the instant gratification culture that sometimes makes recruiting a difficult thing to follow. There’s plenty of really good work being done behind the scenes by Hicks and others, but that doesn’t mean all of their tweets and buzz-building is rooted in hard evidence.
A lot of the confidence and expectations being expressed are momentum-based predictions because of solidly built relationships and the things being said in private conversations.
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The simple truth is that the kids putting in extensive time on the recruiting trail are excited by those talks, and that has led to the belief that a lot of good things are coming for the Buckeyes in the Class of 2022. It doesn’t mean, necessarily, that it’s going to happen overnight. Call it a slow burn.
That will not make the instant gratification crowd happy, but it should because the odds of retaining the highest-profile recruits go up — especially in a class that will not do almost anything on the visit front until next spring — if the relationships are longer built and more solidly rooted. That may mean some delays in potential commitments now, but it should end up being a positive for Ohio State down the road. It should mean more of a trickle-effect — that could start tomorrow with tight end Benji Gosnell’s expected announcement — as opposed to the deluge being predicted on social media.
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