Six months ago, Ohio State wasn’t on the radar screen for speedy running back Dontre Wilson of DeSoto, Texas, who has been courted heavily by Texas, Oregon, Oklahoma State and Oklahoma. But now?

“I want to say he’s leaning toward some schools more than others,” DeSoto coach Claude Mathis said. “And I want to say Ohio State probably is in his top three.”

He said it matter-of-factly, as if it shouldn’t come as a surprise.

“Heck, you’ve got Urban Meyer there at Ohio State now,” Mathis said. “And (offensive coordinator Tom) Herman is going to run a spread offense that suits Dontre. So I’m not surprised at all.

“I think Ohio State is going to have a chance to get a couple of players out of this state each year just because of the offense they’re going to run and the coaches they have designing the thing.”

The Buckeyes already have a commitment for their 2013 class from quarterback J.T. Barrett of Rider High School in Wichita Falls, Texas.

“I wasn’t surprised at all,” Rider coach Jim Garfield said. “Coach Meyer had recruited a young man from our place when he was at Florida, so he understands the tradition we have here, the kind of talent that we have here at Rider. And coach Herman, a friend of mine who is recruiting J.T., he came in here and did a great job. So I wasn’t surprised at all with Ohio State’s success.”

Notice that Herman’s name has come up twice. That’s because before being hired as offensive coordinator at Iowa State in 2009, he spent his first 11 years as a coach in Texas, rising from graduate assistant at the University of Texas to an assistant at Sam Houston State, to offensive coordinator at Texas State and Rice. And he recruited in the state when at Iowa State.

“I know him very well,” Mathis said. “He’s doing a heck of a job recruiting down here, because that offense he ran at Iowa State did wonders for them, and now you’re talking about running that at Ohio State, you’d think it will be even better. Me knowing him helped out a lot (in terms of recruiting Wilson) just because of the relationship I have with him. He’s a good man.”

With that said, Meyer has no intention of setting up an Ohio State satellite shop in, say, Dallas, and making it Herman’s home away from home. But Meyer does want to have a presence in the state.

“I’ve always loved Texas high-school football,” said Meyer, who by NCAA rules can’t talk about specific prospects. “The players I’ve recruited and coached from there have been good kids, and obviously well prepared because Texas high-school football is so good.

“I wouldn’t say we’ve been all over the place in Texas, but we will cherry pick when we’re interested in a kid, find out if there is a connection (that would enhance interest in Ohio State), then we’ll recruit him real hard. That’s just like what we’ll do with California, just because the high-school football there is so good. … We’re just trying to make a little bit of an impact.”

A cherry picker needs to know where the ripe fruit is, though, and Herman has proved to be a good guide.

“I don’t think you can really do a good job unless you have someone who has some kind of connection down there,” Meyer said. “Texas is so big — to say, ‘I’m going to go recruit Texas,’ you can’t do that. You’ve got to talk to people, you’ve got to make all those phone calls before you even get on a plane. So having a coach who has been down there and coached down there — it would be hard to do without that kind of connection.”

But as Mathis said, having Meyer on the trail helps open the door, too.

“What Urban Meyer did at Florida (winning two national championships) I think carries over a lot with him now being Ohio State,” Mathis said. “The kids all know what kind of coach he is. And everybody knows about Ohio State, so it all fits right in.”

Share and Enjoy

Big Ten officials came out in favor of keeping bowl games as sites for college football’s planned playoff on Tuesday, preferring to keep the Rose Bowl as the conference’s postseason tradition.

Conference athletic directors as well as commissioner Jim Delany said Tuesday that many details must be resolved before a national playoff is established. Big Ten presidents and chancellors will determine the conference’s official position early next month.

A potential playoff is a popular topic at the Big Ten spring meetings. ESPN.com’s Adam Rittenberg has the meetings covered from all angles. Blog

“There was a pretty strong consensus among the ADs that we’d like to have the playoff within the bowl system,” Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne said. “It would be a competitive advantage to have semifinal games at home fields. … But the bowls have been good to us. If you took them out of the playoff, it would pretty much destroy the bowl system.”

A four-team Football Bowl Championship system debuts in the 2014 season, replacing a current No. 1 vs. No. 2 BCS Championship Game that has rotated among the Sugar, Orange, Fiesta and Rose Bowl sites.

Delany and Big Ten administrators will continue meeting on Wednesday. The sessions at a downtown hotel include conference athletic directors, senior women administrations and faculty representatives.

Options for selecting the four teams include taking the top four teams in a poll, the four highest-ranked conference champions or a combination of both.

“I do think there’s room for conference champions — and this is a personal observation — as well as highly-rated non-conference champions and independents,” Delany said. “How that happens is to be determined.”

Delany also doesn’t want to water down the rest of the college football season.

“The regular season has been and will continue to be the bedrock of college football,” he said. “I know that the postseason is important, I know that the championship game will be important and the model that leads to that game will be important.

“
It would be a competitive advantage to have semifinal games at home fields. … But the bowls have been good to us. If you took them out of the playoff, it would pretty much destroy the bowl system.

”
– Nebraska athletic director Tom Osborne

“I don’t want to adopt a model that discourages playing good opponents or any way belittles the regular season championship process,” he said.

Several athletic directors who spoke Tuesday were adamant about preserving traditional bowls, particularly the Rose Bowl’s matchup of the Big Ten and Pac-12 champion.

“For us it’s critical to keep the Rose Bowl in the equation,” Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis said. “From kids’ perspective, the bowl experience is the one thing they want to keep. Semifinals at bowl sites provide that, it’s where fans can gather. With campus sites, it becomes (more) like a regular-season game.”

Picking No. 1 vs. No. 2 for a national championship game has been complicated and with a four-team field controversies could multiply.

“Who are the teams?” Hollis said. “Who decides teams? Is there a committee? Are you strictly going by polls?

“It’s very easy to determine 1 and 2 (but) 3 and 4 get complicated,” he said. “Polls can do a good job with 1 and 2. I’m not so sure they can do a good job with 3 and 4.”

In April, commissioners from 11 conferences and Notre Dame reached a consensus on a four-team playoff with two national semifinals followed by a championship game. The proposed format would schedule semifinals after Christmas and a national title game around Jan. 1.

Commissioners are scheduled to meet in late June and have a new format in place for approval by university presidents by July 4. BCS executive director Bill Hancock said last month that if no agreement was reached, an overhauled version of a No. 1 vs. No. 2 championship game would be used.

Osborne, meanwhile, is uncertain whether the field would remain at four.

“There will be a push to make it eight or 16,” he said. “When I started coaching, the regular season was nine games, and then 10, 11 and 12. Now with conference championship game (and a playoff) you’re dealing with 15 games (and it could go) to 16 or 17.”

Although the Big Ten sent 10 teams to bowl games following the 2011 season, Delany said he wants to end the practice of sending 6-6 teams to bowl games, opting for a 7-5 records a minimum requirement

“If there’s not unanimity, there’s a very strong consensus that 7-5 is a better standard than 6-6,” Delany said. “Six and six is not as special.”

Share and Enjoy

Michigan will likely enter the 2012 season as the highest-ranked team in the Big Ten and will measure itself right away by playing defending champion Alabama in the opener.

The Wolverines’ stated goals this spring had little to do with national aspirations, however. All the talk around Ann Arbor centered on winning a Big Ten title.

“If we don’t go anywhere else, as long as we go to that Big Ten [championship] game and win that, I think that will be a good season,” Michigan running back Fitz Toussaint said.

Are the Wolverines being too modest or simply facing reality? Four straight seasons have passed without the Big Ten placing a team in the BCS championship game, and this spring seemed to confirm that the drought will reach five years.

That’s not to suggest that there aren’t really good teams in the league, because the conference is probably as deep as it’s ever been. But each contender has at least one major weakness that could hold it back from greatness.

For Michigan, it’s a defensive line that looked this spring to be nowhere near as dominant as last year’s bunch. Michigan State is blessed with a deep, outstanding defense but struggled to throw the ball this spring with a rookie quarterback and extremely green receivers. Wisconsin has Montee Ball but maybe not enough ballers on defense, and its likely starting quarterback (Maryland transfer Danny O’Brien) hasn’t even arrived yet.

Nebraska was one of the lone Big Ten teams embracing national title talk this spring, but the Huskers haven’t even captured a conference crown since the 1999 Big 12 championship. They’re trying to catch up to the Big Ten’s toughness in Year 2. Penn State has a new head coach for the first time since 1966, but Bill O’Brien dealt with the same quarterback issues this spring that seem to have plagued the program for nearly that long.

And no matter how quickly Urban Meyer resurrects Ohio State, the Buckeyes are ineligible for the postseason because of NCAA sanctions.

The good news is that the Big Ten race might provide more thrills than any other power league. For years and years, the championship came down to two or occasionally three teams in the final stretch of the season. Last year, in the first season of division play, six teams had reasonable hopes of reaching Indianapolis with two weeks left to play.

Even with Ohio State not eligible — but playing the role of serious spoiler once Meyer gets his system running — we could have a similarly wild dash to the finish in 2012. Navigating the schedule unscathed will prove daunting for any team.

Last year’s division bottom-feeders, Minnesota and Indiana, both saw important defensive improvement this spring and will be tougher outs in the second year under head coaches Jerry Kill and Kevin Wilson, respectively. Iowa will be young but dangerous, especially in the passing game with quarterback James Vandenberg.

Northwestern still needs to fix some defensive issues but should field another dynamic offense, led by multi-threat Kain Colter. Illinois spent the spring trying to implement new coach Tim Beckman’s spread offense, knowing its excellent defense will be there in the fall. And Purdue, with 18 starters back and finally enjoying some health at quarterback, might be the sleeper of the entire league.

So even a serious title contender like Michigan State, which must go to Wisconsin and Michigan and hosts Nebraska and Ohio State, can’t feel too comfortable.

“I do feel like we’re coming,” Spartans coach Mark Dantonio said. “But this conference is so competitive, how do you rise up?”

Some team will rise up and make the Rose Bowl this season. The question for the Big Ten is whether anyone could or should aim higher.

Share and Enjoy