Ohio State will continue its new pregame victory bell tradition for the spring game, and it will have a former star wide receiver at Ohio Stadium to do it.
Jaxon Smith-Njigba will be at the spring game on Saturday to ring the victory bell before the scrimmage begins.
Smith-Njigba is nearly four years removed from his Buckeye career, during which he spent three seasons in Columbus and had 1,698 yards receiving and 10 touchdowns on 110 catches.
Nearly all of his production came in the 2021 season, when he broke out with seven games in which he went for 100-plus receiving yards as a sophomore. The best of those games was the Rose Bowl victory over Utah in which he had a school-record 15 catches in the game for 347 yards and three scores. It was the second time that season he went for more than 200 yards in a game.
Then, as a junior, Smith-Njigba suffered a nagging injury that kept him out for most of the season, playing in just three games.
Since he left Ohio State, the star receiver has become one of the top pass catchers in the NFL, winning Offensive Player of the Year in the 2025 season. With the Super Bowl-winning Seattle Seahawks, Smith-Njigba had 119 catches for 1,793 yards and 10 touchdowns.
In his three-year career, the wide receiver has totaled 282 catches for 3,551 yards and 20 scores. Since the end of the season, Smith-Njigba agreed to a four-year, $168.6 million extension with the Seahawks that made him the highest-paid wide receiver in the NFL.
Now Smith-Njigba will return to Ohio State to take part in the new tradition the Buckeyes started for the 2025 season, and he will be the first former Buckeye to ring the victory bell in the 2026 calendar year.
