Ryan Day says keeping Ohio prospects is 'more important than ever'

Ryan Day and the Ohio State Buckeyes ended National Signing Day with the No. 5 ranked 2023 recruiting class in the nation according to On3 Consensus. Seven players from the Buckeyes signing class this year are staying home and hail from the state of Ohio, which according to Day is a top priority for the program in regards to recruiting.

“I think it’s more important than ever to make sure that we have guys from Ohio and that we’re evaluating all the guys in Ohio at a high level because between the transfer portal, the combination with NIL, there’s so many things that come with it,” Day explained. “And so families and people from Ohio understand what it means to be a Buckeye more than anybody and so we’ve got to do a great job of that and developing young men, and making sure even at a young age we identify them and build them up.”

The ability to build up a strong culture and historically prominent brand name within a state is priceless in the college football landscape, and something that Day clearly doesn’t take lightly, as he highlighted a couple of prominent in-state prospects from this year’s signing class.

“But yeah, we’ve got some really good players in the state this year, Jermaine Mathews, and Malik (Hartford), Arvell Reese up in Glenville had an unbelievable season, state champs with coach. All these guys are gonna have an impact, we can feel it, nobody stopped recruiting them,” Day said.

Interior offensive lineman Luke Montgomery headlines the Buckeyes top in-state signees, towering at 6-foot-4.5, 285 pounds and ranked the No. 1 player in the state of Ohio and the No. 2 overall interior lineman recruit in the country according to On3 Consensus.

Loyalty to a program is slowly subsiding in the current college football space, particularly with the rapid rise of the transfer portal. And because of this, Day is putting a premium on loyalty within the state that could pay off both in the short and long term for the program moving forward.

“Up until the last 48 hours guys were calling them and recruiting them and talking about all kinds of different things and they stayed loyal,” Day said. “And that’s going to matter because that’s probably not going to go away because of the transfer portal, so the loyalty and the understanding what it means to be a Buckeye is very very important, and now more than ever.”