Karlos May’s commitment on Saturday gave Ohio State’s 2027 class the defensive tackle it did not have. It also moved a number that had moved twice in forty-five years.
Writing on July 18, Eleven Warriors’ Dan Hope put the roster history in one sentence: before the 2024 season, Ohio State had only ever had two players from the state of Alabama. Donte Wheat, a defensive tackle from Montgomery, was on the roster for one season in 1981. Willie Salter, a receiver from Deatsville, was there for one season in 2001. Two men, twenty years apart, one season each.
May, per Hope, “is set to become the fourth high school prospect and seventh overall player from his home state to sign with the Buckeyes in three years.” Set to become is the right tense and this site is keeping it. He is a commit. Signing day is in December.
The date the count turns on
Hope’s piece hangs the change on one event: Nick Saban’s retirement, announced in January 2024. That is his reading of why a program that had signed two Alabamians in a century suddenly signs one a year.
An independent outlet recorded the mechanism at the time, on a single recruit, without any pipeline thesis to sell. ESPN’s Eli Lederman reported on June 24, 2024 that Zion Grady, a 6-foot-4, 230-pound edge rusher out of Enterprise, Alabama, had committed to Ohio State. Grady was No. 45 in the ESPN 300, the No. 7 defensive end in the class and the No. 5 prospect in his own state. He had committed to Alabama in November 2023, and he decommitted in January 2024 following Saban’s departure. He chose Ohio State over Tennessee and Florida State.
That is the whole chain in one player: an Alabama pledge, a coaching change, a reopened recruitment, a flight north. ESPN was writing a commitment story. It documented the pattern anyway.
The count, and what it counts
Hope published a table of every Alabama native to play for Ohio State. Four of the seven post-2024 names arrived as high school recruits.
In the 2025 class, the first cycle after Saban’s retirement, the Buckeyes took two of the top seven prospects in the state: Grady and running back Anthony “Turbo” Rogers of Montgomery. In 2026 they added another top-10 in-state prospect, defensive tackle Emmanuel Ruffin of Bessemer. Now comes May, out of Birmingham, whom Hope ranks No. 5 in Alabama and No. 135 nationally in the 2027 class.
The other three are transfers who happen to be Alabama natives: running back Quinshon Judkins of Pike Road, and defensive linemen James Smith and Qua Russaw, both of Montgomery. Saturday Down South’s Jacob Moss reported on January 12, 2026 that Smith and Russaw had both committed to Ohio State out of the portal, and that both had been five-star recruits coming out of high school in the 2023 cycle. Hope has them leaving Alabama itself this offseason.
Two different Alabamas, and they are not the same list
The count is of natives. It is not a count of players who transferred from the University of Alabama, and the two lists overlap less than the shorthand suggests.
Hope is explicit about one direction: Ohio State’s five Alabama natives on this year’s roster do not include starting quarterback Julian Sayin or cornerback Cam Calhoun, both of whom transferred to Ohio State from the University of Alabama and neither of whom is from the state.
It runs the other way too. Judkins is an Alabama native who did not come from Alabama. He signed with Ole Miss out of Pike Road and reached Columbus from Oxford in January 2024, a distinction this site has already had to make once when a pipeline claim leaned on him.
The arithmetic in Hope’s piece holds up against his own table, which is worth saying because it is the kind of number that usually does not. Nine names are listed. Subtract Wheat and Salter and seven remain, which is the figure in his sentence. Four of those seven came as high school recruits and three as transfers. Subtract Judkins, whose Ohio State career was the 2024 season, and May, who has not enrolled, and five are on the current roster, which is the roster number he gives. Hope adds that those five are tied with New Jersey for the sixth-most of any state, behind Ohio with 52, Florida with 11, California with eight, Texas with eight and Georgia with six.
One small thing the table gives away that nobody wrote a sentence about: four of the nine rows list the same hometown. Montgomery produced Wheat in 1981, and then Rogers, Smith and Russaw.
What this story is not claiming
Hope offers a cause: “NIL promises often supersede regional roots in today’s recruiting landscape.” That is his reading, and it stays his. No recruit in any reporting fetched for this piece says money moved him. What May himself gave as a reason, in comments to Rivals carried by Buckeyes Wire, was the official visit and the position coach, and that is on the record in his commitment story.
Hope also writes that all of the top 15 prospects from the state of Alabama in the 2027 class are committed to schools other than the University of Alabama. This site did not independently verify that, so it is printed with his name on it and it does not become one of our own claims.
One correction this reporting forces on our own board: the 2027 board carried May at No. 132 in the composite, the number Eleven Warriors used in its July 7 stock report. The July 18 reporting has him at No. 135. Ranks move weekly in a live cycle, and the board now carries the newer number with the newer date.
The traffic is not one way
While the best defensive tackle in Alabama was picking Columbus, Ohio was losing its own secondary. Per Eleven Warriors on July 1, four-star cornerback Monsanna Torbert Jr. chose Michigan over Ohio State, and the state’s other two top-rated 2027 corners also left: Ace Alston to Notre Dame and Kei’Shjuan Telfair to Penn State. The full version of that story is in our look at the in-state pipeline.
A program that has to import a defensive tackle from Birmingham while three Ohio corners sign elsewhere is not simply recruiting better. It is recruiting differently, and the map is doing the arguing.
What is still open
May is the 19th pledge in the class and the only defensive tackle in it. The one decision left this month was the biggest, and it went the other way: David Gabriel Georges, the five-star running back, chose Tennessee on July 22 over Ohio State and Ole Miss. The class still has no running back at all.
Every pledge, with the outlet that reported each rank, is on the 2027 commit board. What the class still needs is on the needs page.
