Buckeye Blogger Network
The top safety in Ohio... yeah, we'll take him.
Capping off an eventful week of recruiting for the Buckeyes, Columbus Eastmoor safety Ronald Tanner has chosen Ohio State as his college destination.
Tanner’s commitment to the Buckeyes is not exactly a surprise, but it is still nice to make it official.
He chose Ohio State over the likes of Northwestern, Stanford, Yale, Vanderbilt and Duke, highlighting that Ronald excels in the classroom as well as on the football field.
Tanner also had offers from pretty much the entire Big Ten, as well as Arizona State, Boston College, West Virginia, and Pitt.
Tanner is ranked the #7 safety in the country by scout.com.
Between Tanner and Vannett, Ohio State has had twice as many top 20 (at their position) commits in the last three days than Michigan has had in their entire 2011 class. Keep up the great work Rodriguez, we love you!
Scouting Ohio brings the highlights and Tanner’s full offer list as usual.
Tanner’s commitment gives Ohio State 17 total for the class of 2011. With a class size projected to be around 22 or 23 players, this thing is wrapping up quickly.
Do want.
Most people expect two or three Glenville kids (Aundrey Walker, Shane Wynn, Cardale Jones, Andre Sturdivant, grades pending for the last two), along with a DB or two (Doran Grant, Dondi Kirby, Jabari Gorman, Damian Swann, Wayne Lyrons?) and a linebacker or two (Trey DePriest, Ejuan Price, Conner Crowell, Michael Caputo, Curtis Grant?) to fill out the class.
Guys like Kevin McReynolds, Donavon Clark, and Ishaq Williams are also still in the picture, but whether or not Ohio State wants to take more lineman is seriously in doubt at this point.
Another lineman, Angelo Mangiro, is set to announce his college decision on July 25th and has Ohio State in his top 4, but he is going to Penn State… OSU’s class might be filled up by then anyways.
Also worth noting is that PA LB Ejuan Price was very close to committing to Ohio State this week, but wants to visit Iowa first. It seems likely that he will be one of the LBs in this class.
I absolutely want Doran Grant and Aundrey Walker to lock up the top players in Ohio (DePriest would be nice too, but I have dampened my expectations on that one). Outside of that, any combination of the above players would be outstanding.
Regardless of what happens with the rest of the class, today is a good day. Welcome to the Buckeye family Mr. Tanner!
July 2nd, 2010 at 10:33 am
As usual, a big thank you to the Buckeye Planet recruiting team for the links and information.
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July 2nd, 2010 at 10:48 am
“Between Tanner and Vannett, Ohio State has had twice as many top 20 (at their position) commits in the last three days than Michigan has had in their entire 2011 class. Keep up the great work Rodriguez, we love you!”
Guess what just got emailed to everyone in Mich1gAAn I know… Great work!!
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July 2nd, 2010 at 11:46 am
How is a high school in columbus ever allowed to THINK about wearing a winged helmet?!?
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Jim
July 2nd, 2010 at 12:30 pm
this might blow your mind, but Archie Griffin went to the same school (even though I don’t know if they had the same helmets back then or not)
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southbaybuckeye_ITS
July 2nd, 2010 at 1:28 pm
I know he did, no idea on the helmets back then either since i was -10+ years old back then.
I just think it’s a crime for those helmets to be worn in the state. I think Walnut Ridge has similar ones if I can channel my high school days in the OCC.
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Jeff at The BBC
July 2nd, 2010 at 1:30 pm
Archie Griffin never wore helmets. He would kill a lion with his bare hands, then carve out the skull to wear.
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MaliBuckeye
July 4th, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Huh- I thought it was wolverine skulls.
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July 2nd, 2010 at 12:22 pm
It is kind of nice to know the class is going to be nearly wrapped up before these kids even play 1 game of their senior season. I hate speculation and rumors that swirl leading up to signing day and the AA games.
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Jim
July 2nd, 2010 at 12:29 pm
agreed, kids that like to wait until the last minute or for the all-star games to commit because of the attention and drama that it creates tend not to buy into what Tressel has to offer… which always leads to unnecessary freak-outs from Buckeye fans: “Tressel can’t close!!” ect.
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MaliBuckeye
July 2nd, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Be ready, though, for this class to not be ranked highly. Rivals/Scout/ESPN tend to give higher stars to people who have yet to commit, so they can sell subscriptions during the month up to signing day.
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Jim
July 2nd, 2010 at 1:17 pm
I don’t know what you are talking about, LaTwan Anderson was always the #1 player in Ohio last year, the recruiting services didn’t just arbitrarily bump him up to #1 when it became clear he wasn’t a lock to Ohio State so they could write great stories about how Ohio State missed out on the best player in Ohio
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MaliBuckeye
July 2nd, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Agreed, but if you look at the rankings, it’s not “sexy” to be committed early… It certainly does explain some of the differences between the three ranking “services”- that, along with the “All Star Game” (ESPN has a legitimate interest in having highly ranked athletes in the UA game, which they control).
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Jim
July 2nd, 2010 at 1:39 pm
I was actually being sarcastic, that is exactly what they did with LaTwan (who was in the 5-10 range in Ohio for pretty much the entire recruiting season until the very end)last year.
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MaliBuckeye
July 2nd, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Whoops- I see sarcasm so infrequently on this site…
July 2nd, 2010 at 3:04 pm
I wasn’t making a judgment about the type of kids that wait till the last minute to decide. Pryor certainly is a guy I’ll take any day of the week. I’m just saying it’s nice to have the kids locked up early.
I don’t care so much about overall stars as I do position ranking. I know they hype uncommitted guys leading up to signing day, but I’m more inclined to think they add more 5 star ratings more so than de-value a class because they guys committed early. Beanie was a 5 star the whole time. Brewster was as well. Adams vaulted up to a top 5 recruit on the last Rivals 100 that season, even though he had already committed to the Buckeyes long before.
I just hate all the lead up to signing day, this guy is a lock for this team, no he’s a lock for that team, oh wait no this team in involved. I hate all that crap. Then you get people on websites commenting on a 17 or 18 year old kid being a piece of trash, or not worth the drama, when not one person knows a damn thing about the kid.
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Jim
July 2nd, 2010 at 5:17 pm
I think the Adams situation highlights the importance of attending camps to rankings. Conspiracy theory, but could rivals have been purposefully ranking Adams low in order to have a great story and sell subscriptions when he lit it up at the All-Star game?
The bottom line is that the recruiting services are about making money by finding compelling recruiting stories, and not about accurately ranking who the best prospects are, at least not entirely.
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Jim
July 2nd, 2010 at 5:31 pm
and since we are talking about recruiting services, let me just get this out there
ESPN is an absolute joke, no one should put any thought at all into their pathetic analysis, they are in it 1000% to make money and bring nothing of value to anyone
Rivals is clearly biased towards southern recruits, take their rankings with a grain of salt
Scout is alright, they rank northern recruits much higher than rivals, but they also hand out a lot more 5 star ratings
My basic theory on recruiting goes something like this:
1. Camp offers should never be questioned regardless of what the recruiting services have to say, this staff has an unbelievable record of identifying talent at camp (Malcolm Jenkins anyone?)
2. Offer lists are a way better indication of talent than recruiting services.
3. Never question offers to certain positions (LB, DBs) that the staff has a track record of developing, regardless of recruiting service rankings or offer lists, particularly if (#1) the staff has evaluated them in person
There are WAY too many instances of 3 stars or lower turning in super stars at Ohio State to get all worked up about rankings.
A.J. Hawk, Malcolm Jenkins, James Laurinaitis, Nick Mangold were all 3 stars or less according to the recruiting services, and those are just off the top of my head
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Brian
July 3rd, 2010 at 4:56 pm
I think anyone could look at a player like Beanie, or TP and say this kid is going to be really really good. But the difference is when you look at a guy like Shariff Floyd vs Hankins. In my opinion, Floyd is just farther along in his development, but overall isn’t that much better overall. That is where the recruiting sites fall short in my opinion. You put Shariff Floyd as one of the top 10 or 15 players in America, and Hankins no where near him. In reality, when it’s all said and done they may virtually be the same or Hankins may even be better.
As for southern bias and all that I don’t know. Everyone knows that Cali, Texas, and Florida are loaded with talent. Georgia and Lousiana have come on as good recruiting areas too. It’s no accident though, that Ohio is full of kids this year and next that are going to be offered by virtually every major program in America. I’ve seen numbers crunched that correlated states a kid is from compared to NFL first round picks, All Americans, and various other stats. In all those lists Ohio and Georgia are virutally tied for 4th. Texas, Florida, and California are always top 3.
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Jim
July 4th, 2010 at 7:09 am
California, Texas, and Florida also happen to be the 1st, 2nd, and 4th largest states in terms of population in the US, so it would be interesting to do an analysis of per capita results for football recruiting. Early prediction, American Samoa wins.
As far as five stars like Beanie and Pryor and knowing that they are going to be good, I agree, it is pretty easy to tell who the top players are going to be good, and getting top talent is extremely important to having elite teams.
One thing with 5 stars that often gets overlooked, however, is work ethic and attitude. It seems to me that most five stars have always been better than everyone else their entire lives, and when they get to college and face talent equal to their own, some don’t know how to work hard to improve. Either that or they have already “peaked” in high school and have no room physically or athletically to get any better. This causes them to either crash in college or just stay the same as everyone else who is working hard passes them up.
Alex Boone is exhibit A for this phenomenon.
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July 4th, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Absolutely, those states have a ton of people. But 2 of them would be considered southern. Add Georgia who is on par with Ohio, and Louisianna and how solid they are, and you do have quite a collection of talent in the south for Rivals to cover a lot. In the Midwest you have Ohio and Western PA, but Michigan and Illinois aren’t necessarily overflowing with talent.
For guys peaking, that’s what I was kind of getting at with my Hankins vs Floyd comparison. Possibly Floyd is more polished and appears to be better right now, but in the end Hankins could be the better player overall. That’s where the recruiting sites fall short in my opinion. They seem to only make judgements based on tangibles. Sometimes just looking at how fast a guy can run, or how strong he is may tell you this guy is a 5 star, but if he’s lazy, a moron, not easily motivated, the guy definitely could be a 3 star when it’s all said and done.
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