The website SEC Country scored an interview with five-star offensive lineman Landon Young (6-foot-7, 270 pounds, Lexington, KY), who is currently signed with Kentucky as part of the 2016 recruiting class. As such a highly rated recruit, Young obviously had offers from several major schools: Alabama, Auburn, Oregon, USC...
And Ohio State.
Well, Young didn't exactly have the greatest things to say about the Buckeyes, mainly because Ohio State — namely head coach Urban Meyer — didn't have nice things to same about him.
"I was at Ohio State having a private meeting with Urban Meyer. I had gone up to camp there, and they had treated me like a piece of meat, just treated me like crap."
Young described his recruiting process with Ohio State as a distant one at first. Then a four-star recruit, Young visited the Buckeyes and received a very lukewarm response by his description. However, not too far long afterwards, Young started receiving more offers, including one from the Buckeyes. On his second visit, Young questioned what went wrong on the first visit. Here is what Meyer reportedly said:
"He said, 'Well, if you look back at that time, you were how big?' I said, '6-7, 270, just like I am now.' He said, 'Well, you were an insubstantial tackle, an insubstantial player,' so he was saying I (didn't) even amount to being able to be recruited by Ohio State as a four-star tackle."
...
"That sort of put me on a bad note because that's the team I'm committed to. He called me a bad player at that. That doesn't usually sit well with kids. I may not have been the best, but saying I was an insubstantial player sort of hit me the wrong way."
Coach Meyer clearly has a proven track record in being able to get recruits, both in his times at Florida and Ohio State. Because of that, this isn't likely something that happens to Meyer often, it ever. However, if this is true, then this shows extremely poor tact by Meyer, and only furthers the perception that recruiting is too often based on the strength of a recruit's offers rather than a recruit's skill.
Maybe Meyer has his own explanation for what happened, but if he doesn't, then he likely missed out on a really good player for no reason at all.
Young is the No. 12 overall prospect in the 2016 class, according to 247Sports.
