| 14 June 2011
24 hours ago I was on a high like I have not seen in some time. The Buckeyes finally came in with an offer to super left tackle prospect Kyle Dodson from Cleveland Heights. When this class for started my idea of a great offensive line class was Kalis at right tackle and Dodson at left tackle. Anything else was gravy.
About 6 hours later I was watching offensive line recruiting hit rock bottom. A kid that was always a Buckeye lean committing to Wisconsin on the very day he received what a few months earlier would have been his dream offer. What in the world happened? Think about what has transpired. An Ohio born kid is so underwhelmed by an offer from Ohio State on the very day he received an offer he commits to another school. That tells me he was never excited about the offer. Not one bit. It may be a matter of what he learned during the recruiting process, one the Buckeyes decided to let someone else, everyone else, have the upper hand in. This quote from Dodson speaks volumes, "it just felt right and I think they had the best tools to help me fulfill my lifelong dream of playing in the NFL". Did he learn he was unlikely to get to the NFL through Ohio State based on his own research or did someone from another staff tell him that? The smart money is on the later. We didn't recruit this kid. Somewhere along the line the Buckeye staff decided to let him sit out there and supposedly wait on him to get a test score that would qualify him for enrollment at Ohio State.
I was ready to accept that explanation for the lack of offer to Dodson despite the fact that I recall a number of players who did have an offer even though they did not have what they needed to get into Ohio State. Those players had offers based on projections based on what they had done in the classroom and on the tests. Why not for Dodson, who had a qualifying gpa and was one point from a qualifying test score, with about 6 months of opportunities to get that one point. That tells me that this is about a decision by the staff to not offer him. That is where this gets me all worked up about this subject again.
How long have we see watched this staff make bad decisions about offensive line recruits? I don't even see a method to the madness. One year it is national kids, which appears to be the case this year despite the fact that the program was in trouble. Last year the choices were instate players that no schools that a program like Ohio State competes with for recruits offered. I don't need to go over the history. If you are reading this you are probably well aware of it.
What has me saying we have bottomed out is the fact that in a year with five elite offensive line prospects in the state, Kyle Kalis, Kyle Dodson, Taylor Decker, Benny McGowan and Tony Matteo, the Buckeyes have managed to offer two of those players. What really makes it bad is Decker and McGowan did not even wait on camp to see if they could get a Buckeye offer. They verballed other schools. That is really incredible. An Ohio State offer meant so little that they would not wait for a couple of months to get an offer. It makes you wonder why.
Go back to Dodsons statement. That is where you will find the answer. Tight end recruiting is hard because Ohio State doesn't produce NFL tight end material. It is finally getting through to these players. Ohio State does not develop NFL offensive linemen either.
Between a nonsensical offensive line recruiting strategy and the fact that the players that the staff does decide are worthy of an offer do not see Ohio State as a place that is in their best interest, we have seen Ohio State hit rock bottom when it comes to recruiting offensive linemen.
I don't know if we can blame all of this on Jim Bollman. I find it very interesting that the offer to Dodson came on Fickells watch. We do not know whether Jim Tressel was an enabler to Jim Bollmans recruiting strategies or if he was a partner. I doubt we ever find out. What I do know is we have all the evidence we need that whether Jim Bollman is a good coach or not, he is not good at evaluating talent.
I am sure that there was an attempt to get Jim Tressel to retire Jim Bollman before last season. I am 100% positive of that. Jim Tressel would not go along. That is why Bollman is still here, which is why we had that recruiting class from last year, and that is why we are not going to see the recruiting class we should have seen this year.
It is the only good news about Jim Tressel leaving the program. It means Jim Bollman goes too.
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