Dylan Raiola, the No. 1 QB of the 2024, decommitted from Ohio State on Saturday.
Despite Ryan Day’s QB guru reputation, you already knew the long historical odds of Raiola ever seeing the field if you’ve been following The Meet at Midfield crew since July:
This is why I never invested in Raiola’s commitment. That’s not a good list to be on! Maybe, unlike the other players on that list, he’ll amount something. (Though, in McCord’s defense, the jury is still technically out on him. And at least he made it onto the field in Columbus.) Maybe he’ll be another five-star recruit that never met expectations. He’s not coming to Ohio State, so he’s no longer my problem.
I was prepared to go about my Saturday. But then I noticed Brian “Da Schott” Schottenstein and Cardale Jones were hosting a Twitter Space under the banner of their NIL collective, The Foundation.
I listened for an hour to every excuse in the book. Cardale made it seem like recruiting isn’t important like when he repeatedly claimed former four-star recruit Chris Olave was some unheralded recruit that nobody ever heard of.
Schottenstein and Cardale both offered a sly “No comment” when asked if one reason The Foundation was lacking juice was because Gene Smith’s girlfriend ran a competing collective. They also blamed the university administration, the coaching staff, and beat publishers for not RTing them enough.
These kinds of grievance hours must be riveting to the big business people that Jones and Schottenstein claim they spend 40 hours a week schmoozing.
I would have recorded the session if I ever thought Schottenstein would make the mistake of handing me the microphone. But that’s what he did when he let me on the stage after Cardale had departed.
In my defense, I waited until a moment of silence and asked if I could ask a question.
But I did tell him he should do us all the favor and resign. He’s got his hand out asking average fans for reoccurring donations to his foundation when his family has hardly paid taxes in 30 years.
Da Schott, like most endeavors in his life, thought he could succeed by simply showing up despite not knowing anything about a very complicated subject:
These kinds of endeavors should be left to professionals. I assume most subscribers to this project like me on a personal level. But I don’t think they would be glad to see me if I were about to perform their open heart surgery.
Da Schott and I are both unserious people. The difference is I would never delude myself into thinking that performing open heart surgery on somebody would result in anything other than their death.
Da Schott would think he could perform that surgery if he watched a YouTube tutorial. That’s how he thought it would work with The Foundation. Business people would line up to give his last name and a former prominent player mountains of cash that would in-turn make them some sort of recruiting Godfather.
Instead they’re in Twitter Spaces complaining that negative tweets about the program affect recruiting like that’s the kind of mental toughness that would succeed in Ann Arbor.
The Foundation is far from Ohio State’s biggest problem at the moment. But if this is the best they can do, they should fold the operation and leave the oxygen to the professionals. That won’t happen, though, because it’s about the ego with them more than anything else.
Given how they were begging for donations, I’m not the only one seeing through the charlatan act.
THOSE WMDs. Ted Bundy’s living victim tells her story… How to make classic latkes… The secrets of a master art forger… I lost my first brother twice… Why you should quit your career every 10 years.