For a team that ended its season with a conference title game loss and a bowl game failure, being called the nation’s best program seems like a stretch. One would assume that the reigning national champions would get the honor, or the team that made it to the game. However, for one CFB analyst, it remains the Buckeyes.

“I think Ohio State’s the top program in the country,” Josh Pate said on his show. “Ohio State is 37-6 over the past three years. They’ve got a national championship mixed in here. They are a top-five recruiting program in the country. They’re a very high-value portal program.

Translation: they don’t need to flood themselves with a bunch of transfers because they recruit and develop very well. But they can be very selective, and they can be very effective in the transfer portal, and they’re just excellent at staffing. Just think about what’s happened within the past three years at Ohio State. Ohio State, as a program, has been resilient over the past several head coaches it’s had. So, it’s just been a winning program.”

One thing that can be agreed upon is the quality of assistants. Over the past two years, OSU has developed a reputation for getting assistant coaches with a pro-level pedigree. Take Chip Kelly, for instance. The former Buckeyes offensive coordinator played a crucial role in the 2024 Natty win and then left for the Raiders.

Instead of panicking, Ryan Day promoted Brian Hartline to the OC role. Hartline served as the co-OC under Kelly for one season. While total yardage was lower than in the Chip Kelly era (2024), the offense was historically efficient. It averaged 3.56 points per drive, the second-highest mark in Ryan Day’s tenure. Hartline finally got his calling as USF’s next head coach.

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Ryan Day continued the trend and hired Arthur Smith, who has 15 to 17 years of NFL experience. The other side of the ball had the same story. After the 2024 natty win, Jim Knowles (no NFL experience) jumped ship to Penn State. Ryan Day once again capitalized on his NFL-coaching mindset, bringing in Matt Patricia.

The defense was already No. 1 when Knowles was overseeing, but maintaining it was the bigger task. And Matt Patricia did that perfectly. In fact, in some areas, such as red-zone TDs and third-down conversions, Patricia outperformed his predecessor. They even went head-to-head in the 2025 regular season. In that game, Patricia’s defense held the Nittany Lions to just 14 points and 200 total yards. And Knowles’ unit gave away 38 points and 480 yards to the Buckeyes.

These are some of the things that don’t demote their status as a top-natty contender. But Josh Pate’s talent-acquisition point does not carry much weight in making OSU the top-winning program. OSU’s 2024 recruiting class ranked 4th and had 70% blue-chip commitments, with Jeremiah Smith as the sole five-star recruit. They won the Natty, so no one raised any doubts.

But their 2025 recruiting class ranked 5th nationally, with 69% blue-chip commits and three 5-star players. It did not help them gain a second consecutive title. Instead, it was Indiana. Curt Cignetti leaned heavily toward bringing in older, experienced guys rather than raw individual talent. Cignetti’s 2025 recruiting class ranked 53rd nationally, with a single blue-chip recruit among the 23 commits. Still, Indiana finished the season undefeated and won a first-ever national trophy.

To make this disagreement more evident, the OSU GM has already agreed to this blueprint.

Mark Pantoni’s verdict

After the 2025 miss, everyone in Columbus is on high alert. GM Mark Pantoni appeared for an interview with Adrian Wojnarowski on February 4 and announced the new OSU plan.

“I think the Indiana model in football has shown us that having older players, having an older team does mean something,” Pantoni said. “And so philosophically, we are trying to determine, okay, how much financials are we going to put in the high school world now?

How big is the high school class going to look now? And then is it better in the long run, or really in a one-season model, to go in the portal and take older, more proven guys rather than trying to pay a lot of money to get kids here out of high school? They’re probably not going to play a lot in year one, maybe year two, and then you’re having a lot of dead money.”

It’s not like OSU should completely abandon its focus on high school recruiting. But sometimes branching proves to be an effective strategy. At the end of the day, it is all about production.