Blue White Illustrated

March 2017

Penn State Sports Magazine

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T H E C L A S S O F 2 0 1 7 >> I guess it's just a fact of life that the rich always end up getting richer with each passing year. At least that seems to be the case when it comes to Big Ten foot- ball recruiting. For each of the past :ve years, Ohio State has landed the conference's top re- cruiting class. Even though the Buckeyes signed just 21 players this February, Urban Meyer and his assistant coaches kept their winning streak alive, bringing in a class that ranked second in the country and :rst in the Big Ten accord- ing to Rivals.com. Alabama is the only school in the Football Bowl Subdivision that has re- cruited better than Ohio State the past :ve years. The Crimson Tide were ranked ahead of the Buckeyes this year, too, but I can't imagine there was a school in the country that did a better job of meeting its needs than Ohio State. This could be Meyer's best class ever. Not only do his new players have an average rating of 4.15 stars, but he and his assistant coaches were able to address their biggest need by signing the best defensive back class in the country. With three starting defensive backs leaving early for the NFL Draft, Meyer and his staff replenished those posi- tions by landing two five-star players who could fit in at either cornerback or safety: Jeffrey Okudah of Grand Prairie, A N A L Y S I S Ohio State once again leads the way in Big Ten spring, while the Buckeyes have nine. Elsewhere, Wisconsin has six, Illinois and Rutgers four apiece, and Purdue three. As those numbers suggest, the early enrollment phenomenon has been par- ticularly helpful to the nation's most prestigious programs. The players who commit to the likes of Alabama and Ohio State do so with the understand- ing that they will need every edge they can get as they look to compete for early playing time. That was part of Wade's thinking when he began mulling whether to be- come an early enrollee. He was an honor roll student at Clairton (Pa.) High, so he had the academic ability to handle a heavier course load. He had been thinking about it for a while, and in the spring of his junior year, he de- cided that he needed to follow through. "He knew that he had to do well in the classroom if he was going to not only enroll early, but play football at this level," Clairton coach Wayne Wade said. "Once he started to get some big o

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