On3 Recruiting Prediction Machine: Ohio State is the favorite for Malik Hartford

West Chester (Ohio) Lakota West four-star safety Malik Hartford is less than a week away from making a decision, but the On3 Recruiting Prediction Machine says one team is a heavy favorite to land the highly-rated safety.

Hartford — who is announcing his decision Wednesday, April 6 — has a final seven of Cincinnati, Kentucky, Michigan, Michigan State, Notre Dame, Ohio State and West Virginia. The RPM odds show the Buckeyes having a 95.9% chance of landing the recruit.

No other team has a percentage above 1%.

“When I take a step back and think about it, it’s all kind of surreal,” Hartford told Lettermen Row in early March after a visit to the school. “[Ohio State] is a top program and who wouldn’t want to play for one of those top schools? I feel like after every visit I make it’s hard because every trip is a great experience. The coaches always make it a great experience.

RPM was released to the public in December. The On3 engineering group teamed up with Spiny.ai to create the industry’s first algorithm and machine learning-based product to predict where athletes will attend college. 

It factors in machine learning, expert predictions, social sentiment, visits, and historical trends. However, expert predictions are still a big piece of the RPM equation.

Malik Hartford is one of Ohio’s top recruits

He is the No. 143 overall recruit in the 2023 cycle, according to the On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.

Malik Hartford is the third-best player from Ohio in the On3 Consensus after Findlay (Ohio) four-star interior offensive lineman Luke Montgomery and Mentor (Ohio) four-star defensive lineman Brenan Vernon.

He currently has an On3 NIL Valuation of $14.3k. The On3 NIL Valuation is an index that looks to set the standard market value for both high school and college-level athletes. The NIL valuation does not act as a tracker of the value of NIL deals an athlete has completed to date. It rather signifies an athlete’s value at a certain moment in time.