Buckeyes still on Kelee Ringo’s mind

Hey, you like five-star cornerbacks, right? Of course you do. So does Ohio State’s new look defensive staff, and their new look head coach. Because the new staff really likes five-star cornerbacks, they’ve spent the last few months getting to know Scottsdale, Ariz., product Kelee Ringo, a five-star corner in the 2020 class —and if I may editorialize a bit— a very good football player.

The good news is that Kelee is still has quite a bit of interest in Ohio State even though the coaches that originally started recruiting him at Ohio State are now retired, working for New England, and working for Oakland, respectively. He said as much to SBNation’s own recruiting expert, Bud Elliott, at the Adidas 7v7 West Coast regional in Los Angeles.

“At Ohio State, I like chatting with [head coach Ryan] Day. I like him a lot. A lot of people asked me about the Coach (Urban) Meyer switch and if that impacts my decision, and it doesn’t at all. I kinda thought it was coming.”

Ringo also mentions Ohio State, along with Texas and Oklahoma as the main schools that he’s in contact with the most. Jeff Hafley, Matt Barnes and Ryan Day have very much made Ringo a major priority in 2020, and it seems that their efforts have paid off so far.

The bad news is more implicit than based on anything Ringo said. The fact of the matter is that Kelee Ringo is still a five-star cornerback from Arizona, being recruited by every good program on the West Coast, both Big 12 powers, and just about every major SEC program. That means that he has a whole lot of really good options to choose from, and almost every one is closer to his home than Ohio State is.

Is that something the Buckeyes can overcome? Absolutely. But it’s still an uphill battle, and a recruitment that Ohio State will have to work extremely hard in if they want to win.

Has free agency arrived in college football?

I’m sure you’ve seen the big news about former Buckeye quarterback Tate Martell.

This, as it does every time something like this happened, sparked quite a few takes online, including several that revolved around the idea of this being the move that brings free agency to college football. The implication around those takes, be it stated or not, is that free agency is a bad thing, for whatever reasoning the take haver may give.

This is, of course, nonsense, but I won’t go too far into that because it may spoil a future article here at Land-Grant Holy Land dot com. However, the second thing people usually say when these discussions of free agency arise is “well, how does this affect my team, the protagonist of college football.”

The answer is honestly pretty simple: it really doesn’t. Yes, there will be more transfers in general, which will in turn mean that teams will experience a bit more attrition than they did before. It also means that other teams will see similar increases of attrition, so there will be more players on the “market” for teams to recruit and sign, meaning that no one is actually losing numbers of any significance. Teams will still have 85 scholarship players, and guys that transfer will very rarely be contributors, just as it was before “free agency” was introduced. Players being allowed to have more freedom isn’t the end of college football as we know it. Everything is fine.