Lawrence Marshall is a Buckeye

I'm not sure that the two things are entirely incongruent as it is not so much that Tressel's recruiting was "second rate" (there wasn't much difference between the teams in ranking in that time) but that he got the players he needed to succeed in his system. I do not like Tressel on an ethical level (see Smith, Troy or Clarett, Maurice etc.) but I respect that he knew what he wanted to do on the field, how he wanted his teams to play and the sort of talent he required in order to make that happen. I don't think the "indiscretions of the program" exclusively made the program a winner for the past decade ...you have to give some credit to Tressel, his staff and the players. That said, it was definitely a bonus that he got some compensated high performance players (Clarett comes to mind) and that kind of player put him in National title consideration etc..  Certainly, he does not beat 'the U', for example, without that sort of paid player. 

In the current scenario, Hoke was outrecruited this past year by Meyer by any objective measure. The distance between the teams in terms of talent is not very significant, however and the players that Hoke is getting fit what he and Greg Mattison on defence and Al Borges on offense are looking for that fit their vision. This isn't the Sparty "coach em up" argument...Hoke is getting high four stars and so is Meyer...there is a small statistical variance between the programs and not all players are recruited by both programs so the comparison is skewed in some ways.

At the end of the day, Tressel did a very good to borderline exceptional job identifying the talent he needed for his systems and coaching them. The "indiscretions" of your program took what otherwise would have been a very good team (but one that would have lost more often...and to Michigan) and won a National Title with Clarett etc. 

On the plus side we can agree we both don't like Tressel.  

The undefeated season including a win over Michigan doesn't hurt either. If we beat the Buckeyes next year, I think things will start turning back in our favor in the head-to-head recruiting battles. 

He already has one of the better Ohio prospects in Ferns. Hoke is holding his own. 

Like Ohio, not every Michigan kid will want to go to the big instate school. It's either MSU, OSU, or some other school. Marshall and Webb just happened to pick OSU. It's happened before.(See Gholston, Vernon; Washington, Taurian;Krenzel, Craig)

Calm down. UM and Ohio are recruiting at the same level.There is no distinguishable difference between the two.

That's not much of a surprise though, we're focusing on Doles/Bars/Cole when it comes to Oline.

20 or something close to that.  We have 5 verbals so far.

Ok, Sparty...

Well that makes me feel all better

His strategy is only successful if it ends up being a net benefit.

Damon Webb is going to be a top 100 recruit nationally, so it's a shot to us and a plus to him.

Marshall is a good prospect, but we probably can do better. Meyer can definitely do better given his historical level of recruiting. Probably not a net benefit.

He's trying to screw with us, showing us what happens when we don't stay off his lawn. Good for him, but if he keeps it up it's going to hurt him in the long run...there are only 3-4 kids in Michigan worth it this year. I'm not sure Marshall is one of them.

If we're playing the "who can steal the better player from the other team's home state" game, it's going to be almost impossible for him to win that in the long term. Ohio is too deep and Michigan is too shallow...really MSU is going to end up being the loser here. As usual.

OSU has scholarship limits too.  Every kid they grab out of Michigan is one less kid that they can grab out of Ohio.  Meyer aslo wants to have a significant number of kids from the south.

The net result is a de-emphasis of Ohio by OSU.  You can see it when you look at their numbers.  

That strategy has some risk.  Over time, Meyer will lose his reputation as "that coach from Florida" and become "that coach from the Big Ten".  That won't sell as well to many southern kids who will choose to go to a "rising" SEC school - Ole Miss, South Carolina, TAM, etc. - instead of Ohio State.

OSU will get some kids from the state of Michigan, but that's not always going to be a relaible source of talent for Ohio State.    

Taking your eye off the Ohio ball to make Hoke's life harder may not be a good long term strategy.  

Historically, when Michigan has been able to make in-roads into Ohio, they have been strong.  Because of simple math and a wandering eye towards the south and Michigan, Meyer is conceding significant Ohio ground to Michigan.

Yup. Generally, a team's recruiting success for a class is based on how their season went for the year 2 years preceeding the recruiting class (i.e. 2014 recruiting is impacted by 2012 season). UM had a good 2011 season and reaped the benefits in the 2013 class. OSU's success in 2013 class (despite their sh*tty 2011 season) came from the new coach bump and the fact that the new coach in question was Urban Meyer who has 2 MNC rings.

Unfortunately, UM had a relatively disappointing 2012 season (we know that UM played an extremely difficult schedule while OSU played a much easier one but most recruits aren't going to care about that) and it might be reflected in a weaker 2014 class for UM -- relative to the 2013 class. Also unfortunately, OSU had an undefeated season (and didn't even have to play an undefeated ND or a juggernaut Bama in the MNC game and risk losing) so they are probably going to clean up again in 2014. Sucks but probably true.

So far the kid's we've taken with OSU offers are:

2014
Michael Ferns-OH

2013
David Dawson
Chris Fox
Ben Gedeon-OH
Derrick Green
Maurice Hurst Jr.
Mike McCray Jr-OH
Henry Poggi
Deveon Smith-OH
Logan Tulley-Tillman
Dymonte Thomas-OH

2012
Kyle Kalis-OH
Ondre Pipkins
Terry Richardson
James Ross

Kalis, Thomas, and Ferns are virtually guaranteed to be huge blows to Ohio. I'd say we've won the border war so far.

Agreed.

The way I look at recruiting is that it reshapes the probability that a team wins any given game.  We're recruiting at an extremely high level and so is OSU.  In fact, they might be at a slightly higher level going forward.  Maybe that gives them, based on talent alone, a 50-55% chance of winning a neutral site head-to-head game with us.  That's fine.  The talent is similar enough that other factors will generally determine the winner (coaching, execution, talent development, injuries, luck, officiating, weather, etc.). 

These probabilities are getting a little out of hand, though, when you compare Michigan & OSU to the rest of the conference.

I don't really think he's the kind of guy that you waste time trying to flip (unlike Webb). We can find an out of state guy of equal calibur. He's probably a borderline 3/4 star recruit.