Real Pod Wednesdays

There are plenty of good vibes emanating from the Woody Hayes Athletic Center following its most recent weekend of official visits. While Ohio State hasn’t landed any new commitments yet, the Buckeyes certainly appear to be expecting some soon following a weekend in which they hosted four five-star defensive prospects: defensive ends Dylan Stewart and Eddrick Houston, safety KJ Bolden and cornerba...

The Big Ten’s new scheduling model should help Ohio State, but it might make for a less entertaining regular season. Following last week’s announcement that the Big Ten will go divisionless and that Michigan will be Ohio State’s only protected annual opponent beginning in 2024, we spend the majority of this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays discussing what we like and what we don’t like about...

With Ohio State’s 2022-23 year in sports just about complete and a new year of Buckeye sports just a few months away, we decided it was the perfect time to sit down with Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith to talk about the hottest topics in Ohio State sports, college athletics as a whole and the Big Ten. In a 30-minute conversation with Gene Smith to begin this week’s Real Pod Wednesdays, we...

For the first time since the end of spring practices, we had the opportunity to talk to all of Ohio State’s assistant football coaches on Tuesday. All 10 of Ohio State’s on-field assistants as well as director of sports performance Mickey Marotti met with the media on Tuesday, giving us the opportunity to get updates on every Ohio State position group and how summer workouts are going for the Buck...

If you’re eager to bet on Ohio State football this season, there’s already plenty of wagers you can make. Even though the start of the season is still more than three months away, betting lines have been released for half of Ohio State’s 12 regular-season games this year. Sportsbooks have also put out futures odds for which team will win the national championship, who will win the Big Ten, how man...

With usual podcaster extraordinaire and general Eleven Warriors superstar Dan Hope on vacation, Chase Brown makes his RPW debut alongside Griffin Strom, who returns from a one-week hiatus to discuss all things Ohio State sports. Griffin and Chase discuss Ohio State’s latest transfer portal addition, Ole Miss defensive tackle Tywone Malone, who is expected to be the final player added to the Buckey...

This week’s Real Pod Wednesdays is all about recruiting as Garrick Hodge fills in as co-host for this week’s episode. With Griffin Strom on vacation, Garrick joins Dan Hope for nearly an hour’s worth of conversation about Ohio State’s recruiting efforts in the 2024 and 2025 recruiting classes. It’s an apropos time for Garrick to join the show, as both Dan and Garrick were at the Under Armour Next...

It was a busy week on multiple fronts for the Ohio State football program. Ohio State brought two new transfers into the program with the additions of former San Diego State offensive tackle Josh Simmons and Notre Dame wide receiver-turned-cornerback Lorenzo Styles. A few other players left the Buckeyes before the post-spring transfer window closed. And six members of last year’s Ohio State footba...

NFL draft week has arrived. We’re just one day away from finding out which teams will draft C.J. Stroud, Paris Johnson Jr., Jaxon Smith-Njigba and perhaps Dawand Jones. Over the next three days, 259 players will be drafted, and at least seven Buckeyes are likely to be among those who get that call, while numerous others are also likely to sign with teams shortly after the draft as undrafted free a...

Spring football is complete at Ohio State, which means it’s time to wrap it all up and project ahead to how it will all translate to the games that count this fall. We begin this week’s episode by discussing everything that stood out to us in Saturday’s spring game, including a not-great but not-terrible performance by Kyle McCord, the offensive line remaining Ohio State’s biggest problem, the def...

Ohio State officially has a new NIL collective, and two of its leaders join us on this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays to tell us what it’s all about. Former 97.1 The Fan station manager Todd Markiewicz is the president of The 1870 Society while former Ohio State safety Tyvis Powell is its director of player engagement, and both of them join us for the first part of this week’s show to tell...

College basketball season is over, but spring football season remains in full swing. The NCAA basketball tournaments came to an end on Sunday and Monday, so we begin this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays with a conversation about how the Final Fours played out and make some early predictions for how Ohio State’s men’s and women’s basketball teams will fare next season. The rest of the show is...

After attending Ohio State’s first scrimmage of the spring and the Buckeyes’ pro day last week, there was plenty for us to talk about on this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays. The first half of this week’s episode is focused on the current Ohio State football team, as we talk about who and what stood out to us while watching the Buckeyes’ scrimmage on Saturday, as well as what we learned from...

The next three-and-a-half weeks will be some of Ohio State’s busiest weeks of the year from an on-campus recruiting perspective. Ohio State is set to host a multitude of top targets this weekend, next weekend, during the April 15 spring game and in between, so we brought Eleven Warriors recruiting analyst Garrick Hodge on this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays to help us break down which visit...

Ohio State’s men’s basketball season came to an end last week, but not before the Buckeyes offered some hope for the future. Ohio State’s run to the Big Ten Tournament semifinals couldn’t save the Buckeyes from missing the NCAA Tournament for the first time in six years and finishing with a losing record for the first time in 19 years, but it did give Ohio State some much-needed positive energy en...

We had plenty to discuss on this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays after getting our first on-field look at the 2023 Ohio State football team Tuesday. Between watching the first 30 minutes of Tuesday morning’s opening practice of the spring and talking to Ryan Day, Jim Knowles and Ohio State’s quarterbacks afterward, we learned a lot about how the Buckeyes are stacking up as spring begins. In...

Current and former Ohio State football players will both be back on the football field over the next seven days. The 2023 Ohio State football team will take the field for its first practice of the year on Tuesday when the Buckeyes will hold their first of 15 spring practices at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center. Before then, eight members of the 2022 Ohio State football team will participate in the...

What would an ideal 2024 football schedule for Ohio State look like? We drew up our answers to that question on this week’s Real Pod Wednesdays. In reality, Ohio State’s non-conference slate for 2024 looks likely to be boring after the Buckeyes canceled their scheduled home-and-home series with Washington last week, leaving them without a marquee non-conference game. The Buckeyes’ conference sched...

There will be no shortage of position battles to watch when Ohio State takes the field for spring practices in just a few weeks. On this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays – following another brief discussion about the continuing collapse of Ohio State basketball – we look ahead to the 10 biggest position battles that will take place during Ohio State’s 15 practices this spring and project whic...

We had our first opportunity of the offseason to talk to all of Ohio State’s football coaches last week, and it gave us plenty of early insight into where things stand with the 2023 Buckeyes. We didn‘t want to avoid the elephant in the room, so we start this week’s episode with a brief conversation on the continued struggles of Ohio State men’s basketball. The rest of the episode, however, is devo...

Ohio State football got two pieces of exciting news over the past week, but Ohio State’s basketball struggles went from bad to worse. We talk extensively about both sports on this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays, starting with Ohio State football. While it’s a quiet National Signing Day for the Buckeyes in that they are not making any additions to their high school recruiting class of 2023,...

It was a quiet first year for Ohio State’s freshman class of 2022, but many of those Buckeyes are candidates for breakout seasons in 2023. That’s what we spend most of our time discussing on this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays. First, we talk about the impact of a couple of Ohio State football news items that dropped over the past week: The addition of transfer offensive lineman Victor Cutl...

We now know which Ohio State players will be entering the 2023 NFL draft and which draft-eligible Buckeyes will be wearing scarlet and gray for another year. C.J. Stroud left us in suspense until Monday morning as to which camp he would be a part of, but he ultimately made the decision we expected all along when he opted to go pro. He now headlines a 2023 NFL draft class for Ohio State that includ...

The 2023 college football offseason is officially underway, and the outlook for Ohio State’s roster next season is starting to become more clear. The 2022 college football season officially ended Monday night with Georgia’s 65-7 shellacking of TCU in the national championship game, and we start this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays by sharing our reactions to Monday night’s blowout. We can’t...

Ohio State’s 2022 season came to an end against Georgia, but the Buckeyes weren’t far off from advancing to the national championship game. That made Saturday’s loss in the Peach Bowl both devastating but also encouraging to a degree, as the fourth-seeded Buckeyes went toe-to-toe with the No. 1 seed and could be playing for a national championship on Monday if even one more play went their way. Th...