It’s impossible to tell exactly how much NIL and revenue sharing dollars factored into Felix Ojo’s decision to attend Texas Tech, but there’s no denying it was a factor.
Being a five-star offensive tackle, Ojo represented what’s been a desperate recruiting desire for the Buckeyes for the better part of a decade. Ohio State hasn’t landed a five-star offensive line bookender from outside The Buckeye State since Nicholas Petit-Frere signed on in the class of 2018. The Buckeyes haven’t landed a top-100 OT in general since Ohio five-star Paris Johnson Jr. in 2020 – not counting Donovan Jackson in 2021 – though Sam Greer (the composite No. 109 overall prospect in 2026) and Maxwell Riley (No. 127) could buck that trend with a bit more rankings climb.
Texas Tech is reportedly ready to shell out $5.1 million over the next three years for Ojo. Conflicting reports are out about whether that’s fully guaranteed or if it's a $775,000 per year deal that can be renegotiated later, but in both cases, the Red Raiders are at least willing to cough up more than $1.5 million each season.
Five-Star OT Felix Ojo will join Texas Tech on a fully-guaranteed 3-year, 5.1M Deal, per his agent Derrick Shelby of @PrestigeMgmtLLC
— Hayes Fawcett (@Hayesfawcett3) July 4, 2025
Its believed to be one of the largest guaranteed deals in CFB historyhttps://t.co/p5CYQomCVB pic.twitter.com/Pft40wpRm3
Could Ohio State have pooled its resources and extended Ojo a better offer and possibly brought him to Columbus? Perhaps. But that has not been the strategy of Ryan Day’s program since NIL entered college football back in 2021.
And it’s working. It’s the strategy that built the Buckeyes a national championship roster in 2024.
“The number one thing is wanting to be a Buckeye,” Ryan Day said of the players he recruits during Big Ten Media Days in July 2024. “Understanding the tradition, what our city can do, what our program can do, how we can develop you, playing for championships, all those things. If the number one thing is NIL, it probably isn’t the right place for you.”
There’s an inherent risk to throwing millions of dollars at an 18, 17 or even 16-year-old kid. Just ask Texas A&M.
The Aggies poured out proverbial oceans of cash to help sign the nation’s No. 1 recruiting class in 2022, the first cycle where NIL was fully available to recruits after the NCAA implemented its first NIL-allowing policy in July 2021. What has it reaped the program? Well, Texas A&M still hasn’t had a 10-win season since 2012. A number of the prospects from its 2022 class who received lucrative payouts from collectives transferred elsewhere later in their college careers, including the nation’s composite No. 2 player, Walter Nolen (Ole Miss). Oh, and the school paid a record $77 million buyout to fire former head coach Jimbo Fisher in 2023.
Beyond feel-good talks about loyalty or “wanting to be a Buckeye,” as Day put it, he and his program devised a clear, consistent and better long-term plan than funneling most of its NIL resources into recruiting. Ohio State figured out what it felt a prospect’s worth was and its now-disbanded NIL collectives would orchestrate deals for around that amount, but the Buckeyes have rarely, if ever, entered bidding wars for recruits. Some NIL resources went to recruiting, yes, but roster retention and the transfer portal were equal or higher priorities.
Alright, maybe there was bidding for Jeremiah Smith out of high school, but he’s as obvious a generational talent as there’s ever been. And Smith wanted to be a Buckeye all along, too, despite some of the last-minute drama around him on Early Signing Day, 2024.
Ohio State might not have won the recruitments of 2025 five-star offensive tackle David Sanders Jr. or five-star cornerback Na’eem Offord, both of whom drew top-dollar NIL deals, reportedly. It stung. But they invested in an all-in push with more proven assets earlier in 2024.
Who is the highest-paid recruit in the 2025 class?
— On3 (@On3sports) February 5, 2025
An ACC NIL Collective tells @PeteNakos_ it's 5-star Tennesssee OT David Sanders...
Story: https://t.co/RyXhLcsY97 pic.twitter.com/46hSQsPuiQ
The Buckeyes returned 11 seniors who became 2025 NFL draft picks. From the transfer portal, they pulled unanimous All-American safety Caleb Downs, Rimington Trophy-winning center Seth McLaughlin, national title-winning quarterback Will Howard, 1,000-yard rusher Quinshon Judkins and excellent blocking tight end Will Kacmarek.
That core, plus Smith, banded together after Ohio State’s fourth consecutive loss to Michigan and went on the greatest national championship run in college football history. The Buckeyes’ four-game College Football Playoff gauntlet featured victories over No. 7 Tennessee, No. 1 Oregon, No. 3 Texas and No. 5 Notre Dame based on the final batch of CFP rankings. It’s been recounted on here numerous times. There’s an entire library you can check out by clicking the banner below:
But that memorable journey was enabled by Ohio State’s NIL spend, not in recruiting but in the portal and especially in retention. Plus, it made the Buckeyes’ title feel very homegrown, and it says much about the culture of Day’s program that so many draft-caliber players stuck around for a senior season.
“I think that's where it's just easy for people to say, you know, Ohio State just had NIL for this amount of money or whatever, and it's just so cheap and so easy for someone to say,” Day told Josh Pate on his Pate State Speaker Series in May. “If you actually do the research, all it does it really tell you the value of an Ohio State football player. When you look at a brand that has just south of 12 million fans and the city of Columbus with 2 million people and the power of Ohio State, yeah, our guys are going to make a lot of money in NIL.”
None of this is to excuse lost recruitments like that of Ojo’s. Ohio State also whiffed on a few big-time defensive linemen recently in Luke Wafle (USC) and Carter Meadows (Michigan). The Trojans reportedly upped their NIL offer to Wafle in the final hours. However, the Buckeyes are still attracting elite recruiting classes, signing the composite No. 5 class in 2024 and the No. 4 class in 2025. The Buckeyes currently hold the composite No. 6 class in 2026.
Revenue sharing is shaking up the structure of recruiting again and Ohio State is unifying its NIL and revenue sharing efforts under the oversight of the athletic department. But its tactics remain the same. In an ever-crazier era of player movement through the transfer portal, the Buckeyes didn’t lose any contributors to the portal this offseason.
From the portal, they added back the best available tight end in Purdue’s Max Klare, a defensive end with proven production in North Carolina’s Beau Atkinson and West Virginia running back CJ Donaldson, who is projected to work in tandem with James Peoples atop Ohio State’s depth chart at the position.
Perhaps the Buckeyes’ approach to roster building will yield more national championships soon.
"Once you win that national championship, for the most part, you’ll get the benefit of the doubt moving forward," Day told NBC in May. "Not that anything is guaranteed because once you lose a game, it’s not good (laughs). But that’s part of the job here. It’s part of the excellence. It’s a wonderful place to be. You get to be around great people, you get to recruit great people — even in a day and age where there’s a lot of craziness going on.
"But we do, we have good people here. Our culture is very, very strong. I always kind of said to recruits and families, ‘If we win one of these national championships, watch out, we’re gonna be doing it for a while, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun.’”
