.png)
EDITOR’S NOTE – With college and professional sports on a hiatus
due to the Coronavirus pandemic, we will spend time during the month of April
looking back at past Ohio State football recruiting classes. We
will look at classes over the last 30 years, beginning with this look at the
1990 class. We hope you enjoy these lookbacks at some great recruiting stories
over the years.
The year was 1990 and Ohio State football coach John Cooper was fighting to keep his
head above water.
Cooper, summoned from Arizona
State in December 1987 to succeed Earle Bruce as the OSU head coach, had led
his first two teams to records of 4-6-1 in 1988 and 8-4 in 1989. Cooper was
under siege as Michigan had been pushing Ohio State around both on the field
and in the recruiting wars.
The
embattled OSU coach needed
to start winning some recruiting battles. And that is exactly what happened in
February 1990, when star running back Robert Smith of Euclid, Ohio, selected
Ohio State over USC and many other top schools.
Smith, listed at 6-2 and 190 pounds,
was regarded as a transformational star. He rushed for 2,322 yards and 32
touchdowns in his senior season at Euclid and over 5,300 yards in his high
school career. He was also the Class AAA state champion in the 100-meter dash
in track. He was a two-time Ohio Mr. Football award winner and was regarded by
some services as the nation’s top football prospect.
Suffice
to say, the protracted battle for Smith’s services helped make Ohio State
football recruiting a spectator sport – something that continues unabated 30
years later.
Ironically, it was the Ohio State medical program that helped sway
Smith to the Buckeyes.
“That
was the deciding factor,” said Smith, who signed with OSU on the national
signing day of Feb. 14, 1990. “I was a little bit down and wondering if I ever
wanted to play Division I football, seeing how much other stuff you have to
deal with when you play football.
“(Former Buckeye) Dr. John Frank
convinced me it’s worth it. He went through pre-med playing Division I
football, then went to the pros and still went to medical school in the
off-season.”
Cooper was beaming after one of his
first big recruiting wins as the Ohio State coach.
“He is probably good enough to come in
here and make a contribution next year,” Cooper said. “I know he can run. He’s
got a passing gear. Just watching a highlight film of him, it’s easy to get
excited.”
Smith
went on to start two seasons (1990 and 1992) with the Buckeyes, taking the 1991
season off after a dispute with an OSU assistant (then-offensive coordinator
Elliot Uzelac) over academics.
Smith was one of 20 signees
Cooper had in the 1990 recruiting class. That class was ranked anywhere from
third to sixth nationally by the various recruiting services.
With Ohio State honing in on what could be the nation’s No.
1-ranked class in the 2021 cycle, we thought it might be interesting and
informative to look back at past classes.
Over the next few weeks, we will look OSU’s past recruiting
classes over the last 30 years. We will study the climate surrounding the
program going into each signing day, examine the list of signees and identify
the blue chip signees as well as the key players who got away and share the
class rankings. We will also look at how the classes panned out with their
four-year record as well as how many guys developed as starters, All-Big Ten
and All-American picks and NFL draftees.
Here is a look at how the Ohio State 1990 recruiting class
fared.
THE
SETTING
*
1989 Season: 8-4 overall, 6-2 Big Ten (tied for third), finished 24th in final Associated Press poll
*
Meeting Michigan: Ohio State dropped to 0-2 against
Michigan under John Cooper with a 28-18 loss at Ann Arbor.
*
Bowl Game: Lost to No. 9 Auburn 31-14 in the Hall of Fame Bowl in
Tampa.
CLASS DATA
*
Ranking: Ranked Ohio State’s class sixth nationally by Tom Lemming
and SuperPrep’s Allen Wallace, ranked fifth by Max Emfinger, ranked third by
United Press International.
*
Number Of Signees: 20
* Top Signees: Lemming
listed 144 prospects nationally on his All-American list for the 1990 class.
Ohio State signed six of those players: QB Preston Harrison, QB Joe Pickens, RB Robert Smith, DL Matt
Bonhaus, DB Butler By’not’e and DB Larry Kennedy.
*
Other Signed: LB Mick Barsala, DE Pete Beckman, DL Matt Bonhaus, LB
Randy Brown, MG Sean Carden, RB Jeff Cothran, OL Mike Dully, WR Joey Galloway,
QB Johnny Mattress, DB Tim Patillo, TE Craig Robinson, FB Alex Rodriguez, WR
Chris Sanders, WR Norman Williams
*
Key Misses: DL Aaron Jackson (Michigan State), LB Corries Hardy
(Miami, Fla.), LB Anthony Peterson (Notre Dame), RB Ricky Powers (Michigan)
THE SKINNY
John Cooper was just finding himself as a recruiter as he
wrapped his second season as the Ohio State head coach. Steve Pederson, who
would go on to become an athletic director at Pittsburgh and Nebraska, was
OSU’s recruiting coordinator.
Quarterbacks coach Ron Hudson was recruiting the Cleveland area,
in particular, very well. He had landed LB Steve Tovar, OL Rod Smith and RB
Raymont Harris in the 1989 class and helped sign RB Robert Smith and QB Joe Pickens in 1990.
Pickens was among three quarterback signees as OSU also added
Johnny Mattress from Cincinnati Princeton and Preston Harrison from Columbus
South, although Harrison could also rep at other positions.
Amazingly, none of the three would ever start a game a game at
quarterback for Ohio State. Harrison would ultimately move to linebacker.
Pickens ultimately transferred to Duke and Mattress ended up at a junior college.
WR Joey Galloway, from
Bellaire, Ohio, would ultimately become a college star at OSU and, like Robert
Smith, enjoyed a long career in the NFL. Those two and their OSU teammate Kirk
Herbstreit, a Cooper signee in 1988, have also carved out long careers as
college football broadcasters.
This class helped put the Cooper program on solid ground and
helped pave the way for better days in the years ahead. As seniors in 1993,
many of these players helped win the program’s first Big Ten title in seven
years.
COACH’S COMMENTS
* Cooper on the class: “I think this is a good, solid crop for
us, particularly at the skill positions. On paper, it’s a good, solid class for
us. The thing that I’m excited most about is the fact that we were able to keep
all of our players at home again this year. We didn’t lose a single football
player in this state that visited our campus and to who we offered a
scholarship.
“There were some players who, for whatever reason, didn’t visit
here. Obviously, if they don’t visit, you don’t have a chance to recruit them.
We were able to sign our in-state players again this year and that’s one of the
things we talked about when I was hired as head football coach at Ohio State.”
* Cooper on the quarterbacks: “The quarterbacks we recruited
could play other positions. We tell every young man he can come in here and
play the position he wants to play. We’ve got seven quarterbacks now and
obviously all of them can’t play. We’ll play the best one, work with two more
and either move the other guys to another position, redshirt them or play them
on the scout team.”
* Cooper on adding Robert
Smith, but missing on Ricky Powers: “There wasn’t really any pressure on us to
sign Robert. We signed four running backs and we were going to sign those three
other ones if Robert hadn’t come. We think we’ve got some good, quality running
backs, not just Robert Smith.
“If a young man doesn’t
want to visit your school, there’s not a whole lot you can do in recruiting. I
think the comment was made that Ricky Powers didn’t want to go school where
Robert Smith was going. Ricky is a great athlete and I’m disappointed that he didn’t
at least come down and look us over. But we recruited him hard.”
FOUR-YEAR RECORD
Here is how the class fared over its four-year run at Ohio State:
*
1990: 7-4-1 overall, 5-2-1 Big Ten (fifth), unranked
*
1991: 8-4 overall, 5-3 Big Ten (tied for third), unranked
*
1992: 8-3-1 overall, 5-2-1 Big Ten (second), ranked 18th in AP poll
*
1993: 10-1-1 overall, 6-1-1 Big Ten (tied for first), ranked 11th in AP poll
*
Four-Year Record: 33-12-3 overall (.719), one Big Ten
championship, two top 25 finishes
INDIVIDUALLY SPEAKING
*
Starter Seasons: 13 total: RB Robert Smith (2, 1990, ’92), WR Chris Sanders (3, 1992, ’93,
’94), FB Jeff Cothran (2, 1992, ’93), WR Joey Galloway (2, 1993, ’94), DE
Randall Brown (1, 1993), DT Matt Bonhaus (2, 1994, ’95), FS Tim Patillo (1,
1994) … Note: We are using the list of year-by-year starters from the Ohio
State football media guide. These players started the majority of games at
those positions in those seasons.
*
All-Big Ten Picks: 1 total: WR Joey Galloway (1993)
*
All-American Picks: None
* NFL Draft Picks: 6 total, 2 first-round
picks.
1993 Draft: RB Robert Smith (first round,
Minnesota Vikings)
1994
Draft: WR Jeff Cothran (third round, Cincinnati Bengals), RB
Butler By’not’e (seventh round, Denver Broncos)
1995
Draft: WR Joey Galloway (first round, Seattle Seahawks), WR Chris
Sanders (third round, Houston Oilers), LB Preston Harrison (third round, San
Diego Chargers)
