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OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY FOOTBALL MEDIA CONFERENCEFebruary 1, 2017Mark PantoniColumbus, Ohio MARK PANTONI: I'll just start off with one of Coach Coombs' favorite lines: Today wasn't a good day, it was a great day at Ohio State. It was exciting. I felt confident last night going to bed, and you guys probably saw my tweet, that we didn't want any drama here today and there wasn't. That was always a good sign on signing day. Just to take 20 seconds, there's a lot of hands that go into the whole recruiting operation, and especially during the season when coaches are busy with game planning and getting prepared for our opponents. I want to really thank my right-hand man Eron Hodges. This guy is a superstar in the profession. He's been with us for over a year now, and he's got a really bright future. Tim Hinton has been really great to rely upon as all of his experience as a college and high school coach. So I really appreciate his knowledge and expertise and helping with recruiting. My guys Anthony Coughlin and Ed Terwilliger also in my office that do a great job for me. In the front office, the girls Katie, Megan, Taylor Alex are really helpful in setting up all the visits for us. This past year we hired Zach Swartz, as Coach mentioned, to do all our social media. It was a home run hire. He's exceed all expectations with his job, as you guys all follow on social media. And then our two Jedis, Sam Silverman and Ken Stufflebeam, have been here for a couple years now and those guys are the best in the business at what they do. And finally, I also thank the SACO staff, strength and conditioning staff. Ryan Stamper with his Real Life Wednesdays. Our creativity team meets every morning at 7:00 a.m. to help with recruiting materials. And then I'm missing other people, but Gene Smith, as well, for all of his support and taking the time to meet with prospects when we need him to. So that being said, be happy to answer questions. Q. Can you describe how much bigger and more complex and ambitious your department is compared to when you started here? MARK PANTONI: Yeah, when I first started 10 years ago in this business, it was almost a one-man operation, and now all those names I just read off, we're talking about recruiting an army. Even here now it's expanded. When I first got here, it was really just Greg Gillum and I kind of doing the majority of stuff. And as the number of players to watch expands, as the social media expands, as the nationwide search expands, you have to keep adding and adding. And now even the social media team is a team within themselves. So I think this operation is only going to continue to evolve and continue to grow, and just the nature of recruiting that keeps evolving and taking place. Q. When you talk about all those things and the way you guys have expanded and evolved, where is it left for this to go? MARK PANTONI: I think the next wave is you're going to see it become more -- have more personnel specific departments like the NFL. I think you're going to start seeing -- there's already two or three schools that have titles of general manager, and then you're going to see just 20 people in the personnel office just cutting up film and doing film evals. I think that's going to be the next step and it's just going to keep growing from there. Q. Is any part of that hard to believe? I don't know how you evaluate yourself, but it's changed so much and it continues to build. I don't know if you think that's good for the game? MARK PANTONI: I think any time that the support staff can assist the coaches and make their lives easier, it's a good thing so they can focus on our current teams and games during the season. But at some point when is it going to become too big? There's going to be places like Ohio State that can afford to have these massive armies, and other schools may not. But I think it is helpful, the larger our staff is, the more information we can find out about kids and do the research and be well-equipped in helping our coaches make informed decisions. Q. I would imagine when you got to Ohio State you had a vision for what you wanted Ohio State recruiting to look like. Today's class with all the five-stars, relatively little drama, how close is this class to that vision? MARK PANTONI: In the perfect world, it looks great on paper. For any class I think you really don't know until three years from now. The 2013 class standing up here today, we didn't know Zeke Elliott was Zeke Elliott and Darron Lee would be Darron Lee. So on paper you're most proud and confident of the type of kids they are and the families they come from that they're going to be successful because of that. So in that case, we feel outstanding for the type of kids we've signed and how talented they are on film that we expect them to come in ready to play. Q. Is it too simple to say that the national title two years ago, the NFL Draft a year ago, I would imagine those were kind of the two pillars of what you saw? MARK PANTONI: Yeah, that's exactly right, in my opinion starting with the National Championship and then almost a year ago in April at the NFL Draft, seeing all those guys walk across the stage has really lifted our platform probably on a more national level to be able to open these kids' eyes a little bit more to Ohio State. Q. Just a tremendous amount of this class starting with Shaun, obviously, has been committed for more than a year, upwards of 18 months, and a lot of those guys, they weren't just like guys like Josh Myers, guys out of state, too. What type of work goes into keeping that many guys committed for that long when they're that type of caliber of prospect that you've got all these other schools that know who to target in trying to get them to flip? What was that process like for you? MARK PANTONI: Yeah, any time a kid commits, you almost have to keep remind yourself to recruit as if they are not committed because you always want to make sure you're showing love because you know the other schools aren't backing off. Sometimes I know if we lose out on a kid, it may make us start recruiting him harder even though he commits to another school. So we have to remind ourselves that just because someone's committed, we've really got to treat and show the love that they deserve. You know, any time you get out of the -- our eight-hour radius, the percentages go way down. So those are the guys that we really have to focus on and you know we're going to be in a fight until that name comes through the fax machine on signing day. Shaun Wade specifically, we have not had a great track record down in Jacksonville with kids who have committed to us, so give him and his family a lot of credit for sticking firm. We took a lot of trips and we even encouraged him to take his trips, but at the end of the day we said pick what you feel is the best and he picked Ohio State because of that. We're really proud of his family and Shaun for sticking with us. Q. 21 signees, it's a relatively small class for you guys. What do the numbers look like for 2018? Do you think it'll be a bigger class? MARK PANTONI: I was looking at it today, I think we have -- I forget the number of seniors. I want to say more than 14 seniors maybe going into next year versus this year we had five. So we knew that was going to be small as it is. So we have a bigger starting ground. In our eyes there's probably going to be, as usual, guys who leave early for the NFL Draft, so we keep some of those names in mind as projections. But I think you'll always see us get to at least 20 and then the big years the 25. Q. Talk about names of the 2018 class, I know you guys have two verbal commitments. Do you feel like a rash of commitments is coming in that class? Because I know last year you had ten commitments already for the 2017 class. MARK PANTONI: Yeah, the coaches, they're just finishing up this class so now they're focus is on the '18 class. We have all the film prepared for them now so they can do their true evaluations on the '18 guys. So I think as they get their lists in order of how they rank them, I think during the spring is when you start to see the guys will really start to push for commitments and through the summer to get a good foundation of the class. Q. Urban mentioned it, but the NCAA might look at the early signing period in December for the spring, and for a guy like Elijah Gardiner, if he were a year younger this might end up different. For your recruiting efforts, do you expect the landscape to change at all? MARK PANTONI: Yeah, I think it will. I'm interested to see how many kids will actually decide to sign in December if they have that opportunity. And the positive aspect is the J.K. Dobbins of the world, you don't have to worry about recruiting them for a couple more weeks until they get here. The negative is if a kid signs with another school, that coach leaves, position coach leaves, school gets in trouble, then what's going to be the procedures for that. So there's still some questions how it's all going to happen when it does happen. So it will affect the landscape and affect how we -- timing of official visits, when we want to bring them in. We may try to get kids in that very last week and now before that signing date, be the last visit on their mind. So that's things we've got to keep in mind and consider. Q. If it's December, you're still preparing for a bowl game? MARK PANTONI: Absolutely. Q. How do you mitigate your time? MARK PANTONI: Yeah, I think just like any visit during the season, the coaches are going to be getting prepared for the bowl game. And then myself and my staff will have the large chunk of the visit on our hands and we'll just have to make sure the kids have a great time, as we do now. Q. When it's 15 guys leaving early for the NFL in the last two years, does that put more pressure on you to get guys who can play right away? MARK PANTONI: Yeah, you know, every year we expect guys to be on that track to leave early, and so there's some pressure to make sure when you lose a Darron Lee, you'd better bring in someone just as good or the team is not as good. You always have to try to equate the talent that you lose with what you bring in. And then every year, there may be one or two guys that leave that you're not projecting to leave. In that case, kind of where we're at with wide receivers this year, we weren't sure on a couple guys what caused that last second scramble with Elijah Gardiner, but we always want to have a pair and a spare ready for worst case scenarios to where it's not just try to quickly find someone at the last second, but we have a list of guys ready just in case something were to go down. Q. Has anything changed in that regard in the last couple years? MARK PANTONI: I don't think so. Since day one we always wanted to recruit guys that are not only great kids who want to do great things after football, but who want to play in the NFL. And so those are the kids we're looking for from day one, and then we're going to continue to do that. Q. I know they came in very late in the process, but did the coaching staff changes have any impact on your recruiting in terms of -- you had to transition a little bit, and I'm sure had they had different territories and whatnot, but you guys made it seem seamless. MARK PANTONI: Yeah, Tim Beck, give him a lot of credit. He did an outstanding job in the state of Texas with Baron and Jeffrey. And even with Shaun Wade in Jacksonville. So when you're very familiar with the prospect and their families. And you have a change like that, you always want to make sure that you're on top of things and the position coach can jump right in there. The great thing that Tim did and Luke did, they were always very up front and honest with these kids and their families. There was no deception, no hiding. When they knew they were going to be leaving, they were very up front with the families. I think the families really appreciated that and made the switch a lot easier. Q. This may be more of an Urban question, but when you help to arrange the recruitment of a quarterback and you're getting guys out of Las Vegas and Texas, is there any emphasis on, hey, let's get some film of them playing in Ohio-type weather, or is the philosophy that a quarterback that can throw in the dessert can throw in the arctic? MARK PANTONI: Yeah, that's a good question. It's hard to simulate, obviously, so it's hard to project that. I don't know what the right answer is and how you would evaluate that. But I do know when we did recruit Joey Burrow, who was not a very highly recruited guy but there was a lot of emphasis placed on him versus the other one or two kids played in Ohio, he's played in the cold, he knows what the rivalry means, and so that really helped Joe's stock in our eyes. So in that case, him versus a kid who maybe we saw as an equal talent in Texas or wherever it was, Joe got extra bonus in our eyes because of those reasons. Q. When you guys are putting together a class, you guys have seven out of 21 commits from Ohio. In your mind you guys have the best class in the history of the program maybe right now, but I don't think -- MARK PANTONI: No, it wasn't, not enough Ohio. That's something we want our percentage to be much higher on. There's too much talent in this state, but at the same time, we're also searching for the best players in the country. We always have to keep reminding ourselves Ohio kids are our first priority. They will be. Sometimes we probably over evaluate them because those are the kids we get to camp so many times, we know all about, versus a kid out of state. Trust me, we place so much emphasis on the state of Ohio and we're going to continue to and do our best to get the best players out of the state of Ohio. Q. You talked a lot about the NFL Draft and the National Championship you guys won, but you know as well as anybody that this class, from a numbers standpoint, with the five-stars that you have is dramatically the best class you guys have put together. Why now, in your mind, do you think it call came together in year five or six for Urban and what kind of made it all mesh at the same time right now? MARK PANTONI: Yeah, I think the three things are, one, the National Championship two years ago, and then last year with the NFL Draft, and then finally just the evolvement and success of our Real Life Wednesdays program to not only be able to say here's what we do and have these great speakers who our team, but to then show Billy Price doing an internship with Nike, to have Joe Burrow, Austin and Sam Hubbard go to Goldman Sachs in New York, and so now these are testimonies, our guys actually do this instead of just having guys speak and giving us great information, but now we have guys in the real world doing these great internships. I think that was huge for Baron and Jeffrey and among others, and I think between those three different things I just mentioned is the huge success we've had. Q. Did Beck try to recruit Browning and Okudah after Texas after he left Texas? MARK PANTONI: Not that I'm aware of. Q. Were you worried about those kids? MARK PANTONI: I think there's just always the respect factor. He's got a job to do down there, too. So they did go see J. K. That was no surprise to us. Q. How are you on numbers? I think we have you at 89 with this class, guys on the current roster? MARK PANTONI: Yeah, I'm not even sure where today puts us, but we will be at 85 come August when we need to be. Q. And you guys had a kid on a visit recently cited for marijuana possession. How does that happen? MARK PANTONI: You know, we educate our players as much as we can, and we try to do as much research on prospects before we even bring them up here, and I guess mistakes happen with the number of kids we bring up here. We don't want it to happen and it's not a good reflection on us, either. So we do as much homework as we can to avoid those situations, but we got a bad deal on that one. Q. Is there any worry about whoever was hosting him on the guys on your end? MARK PANTONI: You mean -- we don't really -- it's not a worry. Obviously we worry every day about kids. It's college. We don't want our players doing that sort of thing. But it's not something we go to sleep every night worried about that kids are going to have issues like that. We have a lot of trust in our kids, and we constantly remind them every day, our coaches do. We feel confident in the type of kids we bring in the program that they make the right decisions. Q. Is Elijah Gardiner a great example of the depth of the book that you guys keep or accumulate? Can you take me through first hearing about him to having Urban Meyer going to Texas? MARK PANTONI: Eran, who I mentioned before, he's the one who actually found Elijah just searching through names. And when the coaches -- it was on a Sunday, Coach Meyer was in the office and we started showing him some of these receivers that we had found and Elijah was one of them, a guy we were very interested in and figured we needed to get to know. So Kevin was down the first week to go see him with Zach Smith, and they liked his physical appearance, got great feedback from the high school coach. And so then that next week is when we decided to fly Coach Meyer in and he felt the same way those guys did, decided to bring him here on a visit, which was almost like a job interview for him, getting him around our players, constantly asking our players what he was like with them, just to make sure, again, we want to make sure we bring in the right type of kid and all the boxes checked out positively for him, and we're glad he's a buckeye. Q. How much of a scramble, as you look back on it now, was it to get that third receiver if that's what you want to call it in this class? Y'all went through almost a Rolodex of names until you found Elijah. I guess the jury is out on him for the first couple years, but how much of a scramble was that, and how much of a need was that to get the third receiver? MARK PANTONI: We felt it was fairly important, obviously, to do the search that we did. We play a lot of receivers, as you guys know, so wanted to be able to have the depth and practice to be able to practice and give these guys the rest that they need in between practice reps. We thought it was very important. So to bring a guy in who we know may be a little bit developmental but who is a big, strong, fast guy to give us some depth at that position here for the future, like a guy like Bin Victor did last year. We knew he was a guy who needed to be developed, but he came on a lot faster than we thought. Q. Did you ever believe that Real Life Wednesdays, when it was introduced, that it would become a major factor in your recruiting? Are you sitting here now a little bit -- MARK PANTONI: Yeah, a little bit, the impact it's had not only on recruiting but our players itself, and the fact that these guys are now more interested in doing more research on different fields of area, knowing that Coach Meyer is going to help them get to that point I think has been a huge success. Q. You mentioned that this whole process is starting to feel like the NFL a little bit, so what lessons are you taking learning from their personnel people and how they handle the free agency? The NFL is similar, but is it different? MARK PANTONI: It's probably just a little bit similar in just the traits and their mindset of how they draft people as far as film evaluation, character, the critical factors they look for at each position, more so on that and then free agency and trades and salary caps and that sort of thing. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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