Over the last decade, the Ohio State Buckeyes have proven to be one of the best places in the country to develop if you’re a defensive end. Look at players like Jack Sawyer, Chase Young, and Joey Bosa, all of which made it to the NFL and had a shot at massive contracts right out of college.

That’s going to be the pitch Ohio State leads with in an attempt to gain a commitment from edge rusher Carter Meadows, who has his potential programs down to four. However, there are numerous teams aiming to make a similar pitch as the Buckeyes will have competition in the pursuit of the star defensive end.

Meadows has trimmed his final teams down to four, and Ohio State will see a few familiar names on the list. It will be battling, per Steve Wiltfong, Michigan, Penn State and South Carolina.

Per 247Sports, Meadows is the 4th-best edge in the Class of 2026, so he’s certainly a name to keep an eye on. Maryland and Notre Dame have the top two at the position with the third-best recruit, Trenton Henderson, having yet to have a Crystal Ball Prediction.

Ohio State has some incoming talent in Zion Grady and Epi Sitanilei, both of which are four-star recruits in the Class of 2025, but it doesn’t have a top-10 player at the position coming to Columbus this upcoming season. Without a top Class of 2026 at defensive end, this will certainly be a positional group that Matt Patricia and company need to target or plan to find talent from in the transfer portal.

Nonetheless, the pitch at the position for Ohio State is easy, and there’s certainly potential that the Washington D.C.-native Meadows, who stands 6-foot-6 and comes in at 215 pounds, finds his way to the Buckeyes in the coming years.

When watching college football players anywhere between 180-400 pounds of bulk and pure muscle wrestling each other to gain ground in the trenches, it’s easy to forget that the athletes on the field are just students, most of whom aren’t even old enough to drink yet. While some of them are on a path to the big leagues and will eventually see their dreams realized at the NFL Draft, the vast majority of college football players will play their last snap of meaningful ball for their university.

That’s why it’s crucial that these student-athletes take the first part of that title seriously. With the new transfer portal rules and the NCAA’s new Name, Image, and Likeness deals, college players can significantly extend their athletic careers and profit off of them without having to be a professional prospect, but capitalizing on their scholarships to obtain a high-quality education should still be a priority.

Recently, Ohio State football just received a huge honor that’ll only make them a more prestigious program across the board. The NCAA recently named OSU football the number one Division I program in Academic Progress Rate with an astounding score of 1000.

For comparison, Harvard’s football team clocked in at third with a 997 score while the Alabama Crimson Tide came in second with 998. APR is a measure that encapsulates a team’s academic performance, factoring in players’ academic eligibility, retention, and grad uation rate. The Buckeyes com ing in first shows that their players aren’t just excelling on the field but in the classroom as well. This recent 1000 score that Ohio State received is an average across multiple years, starting with the 2020-21 academic calendar, meaning that the Buckeyes have been consistently performing at the highest level for the past half-decade.