In an era where the transfer portal continues to reshape roster building across college football, Ohio State head coach Ryan Day said the program’s standard remains the same.
The goal is to develop his players, transfers and homegrown recruits alike into NFL draft picks, while maintaining one of the top programs in college football.
However, for transfers, meeting Ohio State’s standard often depends on how quickly they adjust, as Day noted that many Buckeye newcomers immediately notice the difference in intensity, practice habits, and overall expectations.
“When we bring players in from the transfer portal, I ask them, ‘What do you think? What’s the big difference?’ And they say it’s the intensity, the way we practice, the competitiveness, the development, the interaction with the coaches – they list off a bunch of things,” he said on April 24. “You watch some guys, and you can recognize how long it’s going to take for the program to kick in.”
Day continued, noting a clear difference in both performance and maturity among players who have spent multiple years in the Ohio State program.
“I think when you come into our program, you are going to get developed in all kinds of different ways to maximize yourself. That’s what it comes down to. And so when you see guys who have been in the program for four or five years, like we did with certain guys the last couple years, you just see the maturity. You see the way that they handle themselves.”
That developmental model has also shown up in the NFL Draft. Since players were first allowed to transfer without penalty in 2021, 12 of Ohio State’s 14 first-round picks have been players recruited and developed out of high school, while just two have come from the transfer ranks (Caleb Downs of Alabama and Josh Simmons of San Diego State).
The transition for portal additions is rarely uniform, as Day emphasized that each player arrives with a unique history and is at a different stage of physical and mental development.
For Day, that split underscores both the strength of Ohio State’s internal development pipeline and the reality that transfers come in with varying levels of readiness.
“Each guy comes in with a different background,” Day said. “You have guys who come from Texas, Florida, or Ohio, different backgrounds and different skill sets coming in, levels of football, IQ, physical development, all those things. And so it’s our job to figure out where they are and then quickly get them on the field. But it’s their job to understand that they’re coming in with this goal in mind.”
In 2026, it’ll be Ohio State’s biggest transfer portal class to date, with Day and the Buckeyes landing 17 transfers. After 15 spring practices in which the Buckeyes focused on integrating their transfer additions and 44 new scholarship players, Alabama transfer defensive tackle James Smith, who was Ohio State’s top portal pickup and the No. 9 transfer in the class, said the program’s intensity stood out immediately.
“When I was (at Alabama), we worked hard,” Smith said on March 26. “But here, the intensity — everything’s so much faster.”
Still, Day reiterated that every player in the program shares the same ultimate goal of reaching the NFL, and that it is both the players’ responsibility and the job of Ohio State and its coaching staff to get there as efficiently and quickly as possible.
“I try to say to these guys, ‘Listen like you’re in the program, because we think you can play here. The question is, how fast are you going to play here?’” Day said. “Then when you look at guys like Sonny Styles or Arvell Reese or Caleb (Downs) or Carnell (Tate). You say to yourself, ‘You guys have a chance to be first-round draft picks. The question is…how fast?’”
