An article on the front page about Jamel Dean references a Cleveland Plain Dealer article saying that OSU will be down to 85 scholarships because one of the 2015 recruits will now qualify academically and another will take a grayshirt and delay his enrollment for a year. Here's a link to the article. http://www.cleveland.com/osu/index.ssf/2015/04/ohio_state_football_schol...

I absoultley would not want to disparage any of our players by speculating about who will did not meet their academic requirements so let's leave that one alone. But it seems perfectly fair to look at who may benifit most form a Grayshirt.

The most obvious choice would seem to be long snapper Liam McCullough. Not only are specialists the ones who are frequently asked to Grayshirt, but OSU already has a long snapper on scholarship with Bryce Haynes. Teams rarely carry two scholarship long snappers at the same time. However in a recent 11W Community Interview McCullough explicitly said "As for the gray shirt conversation, it has not taken place at any point in time.". Obviously that could have changed, but for now I'll take McCullough at his word and assume its not him. Which leads me to my top Grayshirt candidate...

Joe Burrow. The more I think about it the more this really makes sense. Obviously it helps Burrow get more separation from the logjam of QBs on the roster. In addition OSU just flat out has too many QBs on the team even for practice purposes. There's just no way for 6 QBs to get meaningful reps in practice. The 1st and 2nd team reps are all going to be taken by the Big 3 of Jones, Barnett, and Miller. Collier seems likely to run the scout team again, leaving Gibson and Burrow to fight for the few scraps that may be left. Sure Burrow could spend the year sitting in meetings and taking " mental reps" but is that worth more than a whole extra year of eligibility? With Barrett just a sophomore next year it likely won't be until 2018 that Burrow has a real chance to compete for the starting position. It makes a lot of sense for him to go the Todd Boeckman route and take the grayshirt now in order to give himself the best chance to be the starter later.