With a consensus top-three recruiting class 1 under his belt after just one full year with the Ohio State Buckeyes, the university’s head coach of football is now attempting to light a fire under the rest of the Big Ten who did not bear as much fruit on the recruiting trails.
“It’s not only important, it’s essential,” Meyer said of improved conference recruiting in a radio interview with 97.1 The Fan out of Columbus. “It has to happen.”
Brady Hoke and the Michigan Wolverines fared well with a top-10 class, the Nebraska Cornhuskers were the only other Big Ten school to amass what many considered to be a top-35 group of incoming freshmen. In contrast, the SEC — Meyer’s old conference — racked up 14 of the 33 five-star recruits in the country which led to 12 of the 13 schools being listed among the top 30.
Among the bigger signings of Meyer’s National Signing Day were wide receviers James Clark, Corey Smith and Dontre Wilson. The school also nabbed running back Ezekiel Elliot, the St. Louis native who runs the 40-yard dash in 4.4 seconds.
“I don’t know enough about what goes on in the other programs,” said Meyer. ”I know I have a lot of respect for the tradition and their historical success they’ve had,” Meyer said. “But we do need, as a conference, to keep pushing that envelope to be better. [...] And I think all our conversations, we’re going to have a Big Ten meeting here in a week … and our whole conversation needs to be, ‘how do we recruit?’ When you see 11 of the SEC teams in the top 25 in recruiting, that is something we need to continue to work on and improve.”
[Related: Ohio State Buckeyes ranked second in 2013 AP Poll projections]
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- Ohio State is ranked No. 1 by Scout.com [back]
