You can never rest easy in today’s day and age of thinking a big-time college football program has its roster intact, and that would of course be the same for Ohio State. With Name, Image and Likeness (NIL) and the transfer portal becoming a bigger and bigger part of roster management these days, getting to the point where a coaching staff knows what the makeup of the 85 scholarship players it’ll have on the roster is a game of whack a mole at times.
However, getting down to that number needs to happen by the time preseason camp starts, and it’s always a worthwhile exercise to dissect where things stand. Thanks to Joey Kauffman and our friends over at the Columbus Dispatch who did a lot of the research and leg work, we know that OSU is currently at 88 players on scholarship, meaning some kind of attrition will need to occur between now and fall camp.
Being over the limit is nothing new at this point in the season because teams know there will most likely be some subtractions, especially when the next transfer portal window opens. Here’s where things stand by position after the first transfer portal window closed and the deadline to declare for the NFL draft has come and gone.