The unintended consequences of Ohio State’s stockpile of elite quarterbacks

Just when we think nothing will surprise us about college football, well, there’s another headline to make you say, “Wow!”

First, NIL (name, image and likeness) went into effect at the start of July. Then we had news that the College Football Playoff would be expanding from 4 teams to 12 sometime in the next few years. And then, the realignment news has dominated the discussion for the last week as Texas and Oklahoma formally made plans to join the SEC.

Now, a high school senior is enrolling at Ohio State just as fall camp begins and one month before the season opener. And he’s doing it with the hope of making 7 figures in endorsements.

I’m not smart enough to speculate whether Quinn Ewers — the No. 1-ranked recruit in the 2022 class who has nearly a perfect recruiting rating on 247Sports — is blazing a trail here and this will become the norm, or if states will respond by allowing high school athletes to make money off their NIL to keep them in school through their senior seasons.

But here’s what I do know: Ewers’ early arrival makes Ohio State’s QB room indisputably loaded, with 2 5-star recruits, a high 4-star and a 4-star. It also starts a clock for at least 2 of those highly touted QBs to hit the transfer portal, probably by the time spring ball ends. That’s the way the sport works now.

So, Ohio State is essentially developing 2 QBs (at least) for another team right now, and with intra-conference transfers allowed, that could come back to bite the Buckeyes in the future. In 2019, they almost had to go up against Joe Burrow in the College Football Playoff. Is a B1G contender’s 2022 QB on Ohio State’s roster right now? There’s a chance.

There are programs that are absolutely licking their chops right now — especially in the Big Ten. Think of the talented rosters in the Big Ten (Penn State and Iowa come to mind) that are just an above-average QB from potentially being something special. Look at a program like Northwestern, which has grabbed a high-profile QB from the transfer portal 3 years in a row. There are programs like Iowa, Northwestern and Wisconsin that typically can’t get the high-end prospects to come there out of high school, but suddenly, those look like great landing spots for a QB who wants to play — and win.

Redshirt freshman CJ Stroud (a high-end 4-star recruit), redshirt freshman Jack Miller (4-star recruit), true freshman Kyle McCord (5-star recruit) and now Ewers are all competing to be Ohio State’s QB for the next 3 years. In other words, eventually Ohio State is going to have to let a few of these guys explore their options elsewhere, because only one QB can play at a time, obviously.

Ideally for Ohio State, whoever winds up transferring will end up outside the conference, but either way, the Buckeyes are basically laying the ground work for some other program to reap the benefits.

Ohio State head coach Ryan Day actually touched on this at Big Ten Media Days and acknowledged that it’s just the price of doing business. The benefit certainly outweighs the risk.

“… I’m not resigning myself to that, but knowing that that may happen, that’s kind of the way it goes,” Day told Cleveland.com. “It’s almost like now it’s like free agency in the NFL. Guys can go different places.

“I guess you could worry about it, stress about it, or you can just embrace it and try to do the best you can to manage it. That’s what we’re doing.”

Ohio State will basically have its own version of the annual Manning QB Camp, except it will last (at least) 5 months and maybe longer. These guys will all be pushing each other and picking up little things from one another that they can incorporate into their games.

All that said, I’m not going to gaslight you and actually make the case that Ewers joining the QB battle at Ohio State is a bad thing. Depth is never a bad thing — especially when it is at QB, and especially when it is high-end talent.

But there are some ramifications to all this, right?

Every situation in life applies in some way to my favorite TV show, The Office. Remember when Dwight is grooming Kelly to earn a minority executive position with corporate, but she turns against him? Dwight says, “If you’d have told me this morning that today I’d be creating a monster capable of my own destruction, I’d have thought you were referring to the bull Mose and I are trying to reanimate.”

Unlike Dwight, at least Day understands what he’s doing and acknowledges that eventually, one of those QBs could take down the Buckeyes. All he can do is keep getting great players to come play for him and let the chips fall where they may.

Ryan O'Gara

Ryan O'Gara is the lead columnist for Saturday Tradition. Follow him on Twitter @RyanOGara.