LEXINGTON, Ky. — Since 2019, 17 Kentucky Wildcats football players have been selected in the NFL draft.
Of those 17 draftees, seven — Luke Fortner, Darian Kinnard, Phil Hoskins, Lynn Bowden, Mike Edwards, Benny Snell and George Asafo-Adjai — came to UK as products of Ohio high school football.
That is only one illustration of how vital the Buckeye State has been to Ohio natives Mark Stoops and Vince Marrow — both products of Youngstown, you might have heard — in their elevation of the UK football program from SEC bottom feeder to respectability.
So how worried should Kentucky backers be over the fact that, so far in the 2023 recruiting cycle, another school has all the momentum in attaining commitments from the kind of Ohio prospects that turned UK football around?
For those whose emotional well-being is not pegged to the college selections of unusually large, teenage males, the Cincinnati Bearcats have been the story of football recruiting in this area so far for the class of 2023.
Coming off an appearance in the College Football Playoff and one year out from officially becoming a Big 12 team, Luke Fickell’s Bearcats already have a robust 20 commitments for 2023.
Cincinnati is presently ranked No. 3 in the country by Rivals in its team recruiting ratings.
Of those 20 Cincinnati recruiting commits, eight are from the state of Ohio.
Among those eight, six hold scholarship offers from Kentucky, according to the Rivals recruiting database.
If that weren’t enough, Fickell and UC have also gained recruiting pledges from other Midwestern players — tight end Khamari Anderson and defensive back Amare Snowden from Michigan; defensive back Daeh McCullough of Indiana — that Kentucky had offered.
So how worried should Wildcats fans be over the UC recruiting uprising?
For the ensuing reasons, I would say UK backers should be concerned, but not panicked.
The storyline of Kentucky football being heavily reliant on the state of Ohio for players applied far more to the first half of the Stoops era than the second.
In the first six UK recruiting classes wooed to Lexington by Stoops and Marrow, Kentucky signed a combined 41 players who played high school football in the Buckeye State.
For the mathematics-challenged, that is an average of just under seven players from Ohio per class.
Heck, in 2014 recruiting and then again in 2016, UK signed a whopping 11 players from Ohio in each class.
Conversely, over its past four recruiting hauls before the 2023 class, UK has taken only 15 players combined from Ohio.
That is an average of just under four Buckeye State prospects per class from 2019 through 2022 for Kentucky.
So far, Tanner LeMaster, a tight end from Washington Court House, is the only UK commit from Ohio in the class of 2023.
As the Kentucky program has grown more successful — UK is 47-29 overall, 25-25 in the SEC, with six bowl trips since 2016 — it has been able to open meaningful, out-of-state recruiting pipelines in locales other than Ohio.
The ability to attract quality prospects from Detroit, metro Nashville, Deep South states such as Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi and Middle Atlantic states such as Delaware and Pennsylvania has lightened Kentucky’s reliance on the state of Ohio.
Of course, some of those new UK recruiting pipelines were tied to specific assistant coaches. Steve Clinkscale opened up Detroit for Kentucky and had started to do the same in Nashville. Jon Sumrall showed a consistent penchant for attracting players from Dixie.
With Clinkscale having departed to become defensive passing game coordinator at Michigan and Sumrall the new head coach at Troy, it is incumbent on Kentucky to develop other, high-level recruiters to aid the consistent force that is Marrow.
The perception seems to be that UK’s 2023 recruiting is off to a slow start. That is not entirely true.
With seven 2023 commitments as of Thursday morning, Kentucky holds only one fewer than Stoops and Co. had on June 16 one year ago.
However, of the eight players Kentucky had committed at this time a year ago, Rivals ranked five of them as four-star prospects. This year, Rivals has all seven of UK’s current commits rated as three-stars.
Due to the state of Kentucky’s relatively small population (roughly 4.51 million), UK football will always need access to out-of-state talent to succeed.
As the closest, large state, Ohio (population of approximately 11.76 million) is the logical place for Wildcats’ football recruiters to start.
Ohio State is always going “to eat first” (to coin a phrase) in recruiting the Buckeye State, but it was UK’s access to the next tier of Ohio prospects that helped lift Stoops’ program.
In the class of 2023, that level of player from the Buckeye State seems to have eyes mostly for Cincinnati.
That is not an ideal development for backers of Kentucky football. Due to the flexibility and resourcefulness of Stoops-era UK recruiting, it is not the end of the world, either.
Meanwhile, there is still a long, long way to signing day.
