Ohio State is on its way to wrapping up their dominant season as the nation’s top-ranked team. The recruiting pipeline keeps churning out top-10 classes year after year, and Columbus remains one of the premier destinations for blue-chip prospects across the country. But there’s a wrinkle in the program’s recruiting operation that’s been nagging at the staff for years now, and it’s not something they can easily control.
While Ohio State general manager Mark Pantoni was coordinating visits for the Penn State game, he let slip what many in the program have been thinking. Their biggest recruiting weekends keep getting scheduled at the worst possible time.
The culprit? FOX’s Big Noon Kickoff, which has become a weekly fixture for the Buckeyes since the show launched in 2019. Ohio State has been slotted into that noon ET window more than any other program in college football. It’s great for television ratings and network exposure, but it’s creating some serious headaches on the recruiting trail.
When asked on “The Ryan Day Show” about the advantages home games provide for recruiting, Pantoni didn’t hold back. “They do, when FOX doesn’t handcuff us with these noon games, as we have another one next week,” Pantoni said, laughing. He was referring to the upcoming Penn State matchup.
Pantoni’s response roots from the problems the recruits have to face to make it to the game. Recruits from California, Texas, and Florida are forced to catch red-eye flights after their Friday night games. They often land in Columbus at 11:30 or 11:45 A.M with barely enough time to navigate game-day traffic before kickoff. “You deal with a lot of crisis management on game day right before kickoff, trying to make sure it’s as efficient and smooth as possible,” Pantoni explained.
Mark Pantoni on whether home games make a difference in recruiting: “They do — when FOX doesn’t handcuff us with these noon games, as we have another one next week (against Penn State),” Pantoni said with a laugh. “But no, next weekend we will have a lot of kids coming in, a lot…
And this logistical nightmare is a regular occurrence every time Ohio State gets that noon slot. This is particularly brutal for recruits flying in from the West Coast. Four-star safety Gavin Williams from La Verne, California, made the trip to Columbus earlier this season for the Texas game (another Big Noon showcase), and the experience left him wiped out.
“The early travel is rough,” Williams said. It was the reason why he opted to visit Tennessee’s night game against Oklahoma this past weekend instead of making another cross-country trek for a noon kickoff.
Four-star cornerback Aaryn Washington from Santa Ana’s powerhouse Mater Dei program chose Nebraska’s primetime clash with USC over Ohio State for the same reason. His teammate Danny Lang, one of the Buckeyes’ top targets, couldn’t even make the early flight after Mater Dei’s Friday night game and had to push his visit back to later in the season. The Big 10 rewards Ohio State and every other school with a $75 million revenue share. And an enormous chunk of that revenue comes from their deal with TV deals. But for what it’s worth, this might be hurting OSU harder than they would’ve thought.
Even recruits with bye weeks feel the pinch. “Very blessed to have a bye week this week, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to make it,” said 2027 four-star tight end Jaxon Dollar, adding that “Ohio State’s Blackout versus Penn State should have definitely been at night.” The contrast between noon and night games isn’t subtle, either. Anyone who’s been to a major college football stadium knows the atmosphere is just different under the lights. Night games give recruits the full experience of rolling into town during the day, soaking up the pregame scene, and then watching a packed stadium at peak energy.
Noon kickoffs mean students are still filtering in, some fans haven’t even made it through the gates yet, and the whole vibe is more subdued. The SEC has long understood this dynamic. This is the reason that their biggest games typically kick at 3:30 p.m. or during primetime.
For Ohio State, the situation creates an unintentional recruiting advantage for other programs that host more night games. And in a sport where margins are razor-thin, that’s not an insignificant factor.
Buckeyes Might Flip a Penn State Commit
The thing about Ohio State’s recruiting machine is, even when FOX throws them curveballs with these noon kickoffs, they still find ways to make it work. While Mark Pantoni was talking about all these issues, he also mentioned on Ryan Day’s show that the Buckeyes were quietly working on flipping one of Penn State’s top commits right before the two teams square off Saturday.
Four-star offensive tackle Kevin Brown from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, has been committed to Penn State since July 2024. But now, James Franklin is no longer on the sidelines, and the Nittany Lions are stumbling through a four-game losing streak.
Amid this chaos, Ohio State saw an opening. Brown’s visiting Columbus this weekend for the game, and yeah, it’s another one of those dreaded noon kickoffs that makes logistics a nightmare. But apparently not enough of a nightmare to keep Brown away.
The timing is pretty wild when you think about it. Brown is the No. 79 overall prospect in ESPN’s rankings and the second-best recruit from Pennsylvania. That makes him exactly the type of blue-chip talent that benefits most from the full gameday experience. He just got back from visiting West Virginia earlier this week, where his dad Tim played under Rich Rodriguez, and by all accounts that trip went really well. “They exceeded my expectations,” Brown told reporters after the Morgantown visit. So Ohio State is competing against both the legacy pull of West Virginia and whatever stability Penn State’s new coaching staff under Terry Smith can offer.
The fact that Brown is still making the trip to Columbus despite the early kickoff and after visiting another school shows how much pull the Buckeyes still have, even when the circumstances aren’t ideal.