Dantonio got all those Colerain kids and it's not like any of them were huge gets at the time other than the local kids were staying home. The big time recruit from that Colerain team was Mister Simpson and he went to Michigan and then busted out and eventually wound up back at UC but never played. Revels, Goodman, Mills, Byrd......none of those kids were ranked as big time recruits, but they were definitely the right recruits.
Kelly and Coombs didn't really clean up on the local circuit during their time here. They did a good job recruiting in general but the big time recruits wound up leaving home anyways. We got beat out by ND, BC, MSU and Louisville for some good local players while Coombs was here. That's why I don't get why everyone is so hung up on him. He's a good recruiter but it's also not that hard to recruit to OSU. We aren't going to compete with the schools around us for the blue chip kids, that's just not UC football and it never has been.
I liked what Fickell had to say the other day, it's about getting the right kids and not necessarily the highest rated kids. Hopefully Fickell is good at evaluating what makes the right kid vs the kid who has an impressive tape. Kelly used to talk about getting the "right kid of guy" all the time and he was good at doing it. Gilyard wasn't highly ranked, neither was Tony Pike or Armon Binns, or the Kelce's, or Pead, or DJ Woods, or Malik Bomar, ect, ect, ect....
The goal should not be to compete with OSU for players, it should be to get the players OSU wishes they would have targeted instead.
