Ohio State class-building comes with side of steak emoji

Ohio State verbal commit Reid Carrico, the country’s No. 2-ranked inside linebacker prospect in the Class of 2021, is set to embark on his final year of high school football. Hailing from Ironton, Carrico committed to the Buckeyes early in his junior season, made no visits to other schools and has become a leader in the nation’s top-ranked recruiting class. A 6-foot-3, 225-pound, prototypical inside linebacker prospect, Carrico grew up dreaming of wearing the Scarlet and Gray. As he looks toward the future, Carrico is sharing his final high school season with Lettermen Row in a weekly journal that will focus on football, family and anything else on his mind as he prepares for Ohio State.

---

Do you know the most special thing about the Ohio State 2021 recruiting class? It’s not the fact that we’re the top-ranked class in the country, though that is pretty cool.

Really, it’s the relationship among all the commitments. A lot of schools and their commitment groups break contact when they aren’t on a visit or tweeting at each other. And I know it’s sounds like blowing smoke, but that is not the case for us.

We talk all day, every day. Maybe it’s recruiting and who we want to add to the class. Some days it’s about what video game everybody is going to play that day. It’s something different every time. The brotherhood doesn’t have to wait until we’re on campus.

While we talk to everyone a lot, I’m really close with Jack Sawyer and Ben Christman. They’re the guys who really recruited me to Ohio State and the guys who convinced me to pull the trigger when I did, because I wasn’t planning on doing it so early. Don’t get the wrong impression, we are all friends and I feel like we will be closest group of commits to ever come into college. But those two are the guys I’ve known the longest, and we were kind of the foundation for this whole thing a year ago when we only had four or five commitments along with Kyle McCord. It’s kind of crazy how far we’ve come in the last year, but there’s still some major pieces of the puzzle that we’re hoping to add — like we did last week with Jordan Hancock.

Buckeyes fans have been asking about this a lot, so I figured maybe it’s time to shed a little light on something for you guys. There have been plenty people driven crazy by the “steak emoji” and trying to figure out what it means:

Well, guess what? I don’t even know, because it has a new meaning every day.

It’s true. One day it might mean “It’s a great day to be a Buckeye.” Another day it may mean that someone really special is coming on board soon. It’s kind of a witch hunt, and we have fun with it. But it always does mean something, just not the same thing every time. For fans, let me just say that you never know when the 2021 guys are bringing in a real surprise for all of Buckeye Nation.

So stay tuned, because we’re always working.

Read along during the journey of Reid Carrico every week at Lettermen Row or follow the future Ohio State linebacker on Twitter.