COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh and offensive line coach Ed Warinner were eating with a 3-star offensive line commit in Colorado on Tuesday.
Penn State coach James Franklin visited a four-star Nittany Lion receiver commit on Wednesday.
Alabama coach Nick Saban made the recruiting rounds this week, including checking in on a four-star linebacker commit.
Ohio State? Ryan Day and his coaches were home, because they have a game to play.
College football is in a contact period for recruiting, one that started on Sunday and will run through Dec. 14. That means coaches can have face-to-face contact with recruits and their families off campus, which they haven’t been allowed to do at all during the season. The window is short, so that means every team that could get on the road this week did get on the road.
If you have a championship game to play, you couldn’t do that. So the Ohio State coaches will be out in force next week, after the Big Ten Championship on Saturday night and the College Football Playoff announcement on Sunday afternoon. For now, winning is in the way of recruiting.
But winning also is recruiting.
“I think it’s huge,” Day said Tuesday. "This week, everybody is on the road, we’re not. Talking to recruits this week and last night, I apologize, we’re not going to see you this week. Almost everyone to a person says, 'No, that’s a good problem to have, Coach. We’re glad you’re playing in that championship game. We get it.'
“That’s why you put so much work into recruiting leading up to this point. We recruit these kids so early on, the relationships are there. Then we’ll do everything we can next week to get out there and hustle around and see these guys. But, yeah, I mean, certainly being in this spot is huge credibility in recruiting.”
The Buckeyes don’t have much work to do before National Signing Day on Dec. 18. Their 2020 class includes 25 verbal commitments and is ranked No. 4 in the 247sports.com rankings, behind Clemson, Alabama and LSU.
Among the top 50 classes in the country, only Penn State (28) and North Carolina (26) currently have more recruits verbally committed than the Buckeyes. Again, the work has been done. And the numbers are tight with the 85 scholarship limit.
• OHIO STATE SCHOLARSHIP CHART
Ohio State only has 16 seniors on the roster among its 84 scholarships. Another four to six Buckeyes should leave early for the NFL. Kicker recruit Jake Seibert, part of the 2020 class, has said he won’t be on scholarship for next fall, but he will be after that. So at the moment, the Buckeyes would need at least one, maybe two, departures through other methods -- like transfers -- to squeeze in the players they already have committed.
They went hard early to lock down Day’s first full recruiting class, and they’re almost finished. Here’s the breakdown by position:
Quarterback: 1
Running back: 1
Receiver: 4
Tight end: 1
Offensive line: 6
Defensive end: 1
Defensive tackle: 2
Linebacker: 3
Cornerback: 3
Safety: 2
Kicker: 1
The Buckeyes have a quarterback offer out to C.J. Stroud of California, and they could take him, or someone else, as a second quarterback in this class with Jack Miller. There’s also the case of 5-star Arizona running back Bijan Robinson, the type of top-20 national talent the Buckeyes would make room for if he changes his mind about his Texas commitment.
But next week, they won’t be racing around to meet new guys. They’ll primarily be making final connections with their current guys. There’s a national title to chase, and Day said he’s happy with this class in the final weeks.
“I think we rank our guys the best we can, and we find out who want to be Buckeyes, too,” Day said. "That’s a huge part of this thing. If we have somebody maybe ranked a little higher than another person, if one of them wants to be a Buckeye, wants to play in that rivalry game, play in the Horseshoe, that matters to us.
“We take all those things into consideration and we try to be as aggressive as we can on the recruiting trail. There are times we leave spots open to see just what happens. But we were kind of hot this year. A lot of guys were jumping onboard. We felt great with the guys we have.”
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