There are a few ways to look at which college football teams did the best in any given recruiting class, and that’s the same for the Ohio State football program. You can go by overall score, which is what most use. You can try to determine which programs fit the needs the best based on the current roster, or you can take a look at the average talent of each recruit.
It’s that last one that is often overlooked because of the size of a signing class. Take Ryan Day’s first class for instance. In 2019, Day only signed 17 total commitments for that recruiting cycle because it was never going to be a big one with what the Buckeyes had coming back. As result, it wasn’t a top class for OSU’s historical standards, just No. 14 overall in the country, and third in the Big Ten behind Michigan and Penn State. Those two programs signed 26 and 23 prospects respectively.
However, when looking at average star rating according to the 247Sports Composite Rankings, Ohio State was still one of the tops in the country, and THE top team in the Big Ten. That year, the Buckeyes had an average prospect rating of 91.87, ahead of Michigan (90.78), and Penn State (91.01), and were third in the country behind Alabama (94.38) and Georgia (93.32).
There are seven programs who have put together four straight top-15 recruiting classes from 2019-2022: Alabama, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Texas and Texas A&M.
— Zach Shaw (@_ZachShaw) December 16, 2021
This year, Ohio State signed just 18 players through the early signing period, still tops in the Big Ten in total score, and No. 4 overall in the country, but where does that stack up in average talent rating per commitment in the Big Ten?
We’re here to rank each program from worst to first when it goes to looking solely at the average 247Sports talent rating for the 2022 recruiting class after all the early signing period shenanigans are pretty much done.