On the NFL Draft, Recruiting and Transfers

Tuesday represents the deadline for loads of college players to officially enter the NFL draft. James Laurinaitis is one of them as he contemplates returning to Ohio State for his senior season or making the jump to the league. By many accounts, Laurinaitis is a first round lock and even a Top 15 pick according to some mock drafts. I'm not sure I agree but that's an entirely different argument.

While James is still undecided, other Ohio State players have made up their mind. The only defection to date is Vernon Gholston who announced his intention to enter the draft a few days back. Gholston capped off a great junior year by setting the single season sack record. On the same day he announced, corner Malcolm Jenkins picked the opposite path shocking many as it was given he would leave early as well.

Jenkins' quick choice may have helped spur others to comeback. Marcus Freeman made it official today he's coming back. So did Alex Boone which may be the biggest of all considering we have absolutely no talent behind him at left tackle. All of the players coming back would have been first day picks and some may have jumped into the late first and middle second round. Only Laurinaitis has yet to make his decision final.

Recruiting: Ohio State has received a commitment from another Glenville HS player. Fullback Jermil Martin received an 11th hour offer from Jim Tressel and immediately backed out of his verbal commitment to Iowa. This commitment has Buckeye fans talking because it's bizarre on a few levels. First it signals current fullback heir Aram Olson isn't living up to billing. Secondly, we just accepted a fulllback in the 2009 class in Adam Homan (Ross' brother). Homan commited on the 29th. Lastly, the fullback is on the endangered species list so it's curious to have three on scholarship at a given time.

The number of the scholarships brings up another point. The 2003 class really put us behind the eight ball in terms of numbers. Each team can have 85 players on scholarship and Ohio State has about 74(ish). Four of them are kickers or punters. I've already talked about the high number of fullbacks in 2009. Unfortunately, Big Ten football programs cannot grossly oversign recruits as commonly done in the SEC and other places. Correcting the double digit shortage of scholarship players should be priority number one for the staff and apparently it is. They just offered another player at the 11th hour - Zach Domicone. It's likely he'll officially commit very soon.

Transfers: Recently demoted quarterback Robbie Schoenhoft is likely to transfer to the University of Delaware. Other transfers possibilities exist but the veracity is dubious at this point. Nevertheless, for your edification, here they are: Albert Dukes (read the whole thread), Eugene Clifford, Mark Johnson and Thaddeus Gibson. I hesitate to list Johnson and Gibson because all I've seen is message board speculation and nothing else. Actually, with Gibson it's a bit more. Two people were somehow routed to this site by searching in Google for "Thaddeus Gibson - Ball State". I don't know what it means. Probably nothing. Just making it known.