Recruiting trails lead to football-crazed Ohio
State among nation?s best in producing top prospects
BY DAVID BRIGGS
BLADE SPORTS WRITER
Jayme Thompson grew up a product of his basketball-mad environment.
In Washington, where he lived with his mother through the eighth grade, Thompson said he played "all day, every day." So did most of his friends, who hoped to be the next hoops stars in a city overflowing with them. This season, five D.C.-area schools have appeared in ESPN's top 25 prep basketball poll.
"You see the football fields those guys play on in the D.C. area, it's really bad," said Thompson, who became a standout guard for his middle school basketball team. "Nobody really cares. But the basketball gyms for the top programs are great. I was always playing."
Then he moved to Ohio.
Today, the Central Catholic senior is among the nation?s top football recruits ? a result nudged in part by the changing culture around him.
While the South?s growing monopoly of elite high school football prospects threatens the long-term viability of the Big Ten, Ohio remains a striking holdout to the trend. A state where football is the religion that transcends denomination remains the last one in the conference?s traditional geographic footprint to produce Division I recruits at a per-capita rate above the national average.
The story of Thompson?s rise from a high school freshman who only picked up football as a way to pass the time before basketball season to a four-star prospect committed to play for Ohio State is one of ability and year-round sweat but also of the broader influences keeping this industrial state as the North?s foremost factory of elite gridiron prospects.
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