Ohio State offered Kavon Blackmon on June 20, 2026. He is an offensive tackle at Springfield High School in Springfield, Ohio, he is in the class of 2028, and on Monday Steve Wiltfong filed a prediction that the Buckeyes will get him.
Dan Hessler reported that on Tuesday morning for Land-Grant Holy Land, and his headline is the fair one: Ohio State is trending. What follows is not a second opinion about whether that is true. It is the record itself, read off the pages that hold it, because this recruitment turns out to be a very good demonstration of how little the recruiting industry actually agrees on.
The offer date nobody printed
Hessler says the offer arrived “in June.” That is correct and it is also the whole of what he says about it.
The exact date is one click away, on 247Sports’ own Ohio State page. Mark Porter’s offer evaluation for Bucknuts carries a header block above the paywall, and that block reads Status: Offered by Ohio State (6-20-26). Same block: 6-foot-6, 275 pounds, offensive tackle, Springfield (Ohio), class of 2028.
The evaluation underneath it is a VIP article and this site did not read it, so nothing Porter concluded about Blackmon as a player appears here. The header is free, it is 247Sports stating a date on its own site, and it turns “in June” into June 20.
Five services, five different players
Here is where the recruitment stops being simple.
On3’s Blackmon page prints four rating blocks side by side. Read on August 25, they say this:
| Service | Rating | National | Position | State |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rivals Industry | 91.38 | No. 128 | No. 14 | No. 4 |
| Rivals | 92 | No. 24 | No. 4 | No. 2 |
| ESPN | 79 | No. 279 | No. 30 | No. 8 |
| 247Sports | 90 | No. 163 | No. 22 | No. 6 |
And Hessler, reading the 247Sports Composite rather than any of those four, gives a fifth set: No. 15 among offensive tackles, No. 130 nationally, No. 5 in Ohio.
None of that is a contradiction in the sense of somebody being wrong. The 247Sports Composite and the Rivals Industry number are two different averages of overlapping inputs, and On3’s “247” block is 247’s own scale rather than the Composite, so five numbers is what you would expect if you asked five questions. The point is what the spread looks like once you line them up.
Rivals thinks Kavon Blackmon is the 24th best player in the country. ESPN thinks he is the 279th. That is a gap of 255 places on one player, and it is not a rounding difference between neighbors on a list. It is the difference between a player you build a class around and a player you take because he is local and big.
This site has run into that arithmetic before, on the 2027 class as a whole and on Christopher Vargas, whose four services could not agree on his height, his weight or his high school. The lesson keeps being the same one. A star count is a claim, not a measurement, and a reader who is handed only the most flattering of five numbers has been sold something.
Even the tape measure moves. 247Sports’ header says 275 pounds. On3’s page says 270. He is 6-6 on both, and he wears No. 55.
The forecast, counted
There are two public prediction surfaces on Blackmon and this site read both of them directly.
The team model. On3’s predictions page carries an industry consensus across 22 teams, and the top line is Ohio State, OFFERED, at 98.6 percent. The player page runs the same idea as an RPM chart: Ohio State 99 percent, Kentucky 0 percent, nothing else listed.
The people. The same page lists exactly two insider predictions.
- Steve Wiltfong, whose career record on that page reads 1,335 of 1,449, or 92 percent. Timestamped August 24, 2026 at 9:29 AM. Confidence: 60 percent.
- Allen Trieu, whose record reads 97 of 98, or 99 percent. Timestamped July 29, 2026 at 3:47 PM. Confidence: 65 percent.
Hessler reports that both men picked Ohio State, and this site is taking that from him rather than claiming to have read it, because the column that names the school on that table renders as a team logo and not as text.
Now put the two surfaces next to each other, which is the thing almost nobody does.
The model says 98.6. The two analysts whose predictions are the only human input on the board filed at 60 and 65. Those are not the same statement about Kavon Blackmon’s future, and the smaller number is the one carrying the names.
Sixty percent is what a well-sourced reporter says when he thinks a thing will probably happen and is not going to pretend he knows. It is a useful, honest number. It is also, when a team model turns two of them into 98.6 percent, a number that has been laundered into a certainty on the way through.
The gap between the two predictions is the actual news
Trieu’s pick is dated July 29. Wiltfong’s is dated August 24 at 9:29 in the morning, and Hessler’s story went up the next day.
So the thing that happened this week is not that Ohio State became the favorite. Ohio State has been the only name on this board since Trieu filed in late July. What happened is that a second analyst agreed, and a beat writer wrote it up the following morning, and the sample size went from one to two.
This site counted a forecast exactly this way twelve days ago on Brayton Feister, where 100 percent turned out to mean one anonymous Crystal Ball entry. Feister picked Oregon. That is not an argument that Blackmon will do the same thing, and it would be a cheap one. It is a reminder that “the industry is unanimous” and “two people have said so” can be the same sentence.
What the class actually needs him for
Ohio State’s 2028 class has four pledges on it: Christopher Vargas at quarterback, Jett Harrison at receiver, Elijah Newman-Hall at running back and Jameer Whyce on the edge. Not one of them is an offensive lineman.
That is a normal thing for August of a junior year and it is also the reason Blackmon is being pushed this hard this early. The 2027 line is the template. Ohio State took six offensive linemen in that class, and three of them are Ohio kids: Kellen Wymer from Liberty Center, Davis Seaman from Bishop Watterson in Columbus and Mason Wilt from St. Clairsville. Hessler credits offensive line coach Tyler Bowen with wanting to start the 2028 haul the same way, and Porter’s standfirst at 247Sports says the same thing in fewer words: “Ohio State remains steadfast in philosophy built around dominating Ohio offensive line recruiting and here we are again.”
The full version of that argument, with the NFL end of it attached, is in this site’s piece on the 2027 line, and the in-state half of it is here.
Blackmon holds at least two dozen offers, per Hessler, including Cincinnati, Colorado, Florida State, Kentucky, Louisville, Michigan State, Nebraska, Purdue, Tennessee and UCLA. He has not said whether he intends to commit soon or let it run, and Hessler expects him to take game-day visits this fall.
What this site is claiming and what it is not
He is not on the 2028 board, because that board carries pledges only and an offer is not a pledge.
There is no commitment date, because nobody has reported one.
Both insider predictions show an empty result column, which is what an open recruitment looks like from the outside.
And the honest summary of the forecast is this: two named analysts with strong records both like Ohio State’s chances, one of them filed four weeks ago and one of them filed on Sunday, and neither of them said he was sure.
