A wry smile crossed across Ohio State coach Ryan Day’s face Friday when asked about Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers.
The Buckeyes remember Ewers as the shaggy, bleach-blonde freshman who reclassified at Southlake Carroll to enroll early in Columbus in 2021. Day goes back even further.
Day remembers when Ewers was a fresh-faced eighth grader who tore it up at an Ohio State football camp. Now, he’ll see the close-cropped Ewers wearing burnt orange in the Cotton Bowl as part of the College Football Playoffs semifinals.
He was one of the first eighth graders that I ever offered,” Day told reporters Friday via Zoom. “He was in our camp here in the Woody, and I saw a young — he’s a boy at the time, really, who just had a tremendous release. And I remember grabbing him and grabbing his dad, and said, man, you got a bright future.
“I don’t know if this is good or bad, but we’re going to offer you a scholarship to Ohio State, even in eighth grade. Again, I don’t know if that’s legal or not but we did.”
Ewers grew up in Southlake wanting to be a Longhorn. But at that time of Ewers’ recruitment, Texas was going through a rocky relationship with then-coach Tom Herman. The Ewers’ family and the five-star standout himself were spooked out of coming to Texas all together
Herman’s dismissal and Steve Sarkisian’s didn’t happen until January 2021, long after Ewers had put all the wheels in motion to go to Ohio State.
So Ewers, the nation’s No. 1-ranked recruit in 2021, went to Columbus instead of Austin. The only issue was so did C.J. Stroud, who won the starting job and became the Big Ten offensive player of the year.
