Ohio State Football Recruiting: Next Steps for Buckeyes After Waugh Situation

Child sex offender Charles Waugh is in custody after violating his parole, and Ohio State is down one talented LB prospect after Alex Anzalone decommitted from the Buckeyes last Friday.

He originally committed to the Buckeyes after the spring game, but decommitted because of Waugh's access and reach to players, coaches and even prospective recruits of Ohio State.

The dust has started to settle and now the Buckeyes will start to move on to Plan B.

Luckily, the recruiting season is still young even though an unusually large number of top prospects have already committed to schools before their senior seasons begin.

Half of the top ten prospects in the Rivals.com Top 100 have already committed, which is very unusual in recruiting.

And even after the decommitments of Anzalone and DE Lewis Neal, the Buckeyes still have three recruits—CB Cameron Burrows, DE Joey Bosa and CB Eli Woodard—in the top 28 on Rivals.com. In addition, ATH Jalin Marshall is ranked 41st in the same list.

So Ohio State is in no desperate situation, as they already have the No. 4 recruiting class at this stage on Scout.com's team rankings.

Urban Meyer and his staff are still recruiting Anzalone, and they have even recruited President E. Gordon Gee to help as well.

The Buckeyes also extended an offer to another linebacker, Yannick Ngakoue from D.C.

Ngakoue is another bigger linebacker with great athleticism and size to go with an impressive offer list that includes Auburn, Florida State, South Carolina and Clemson.

Offensively, the Buckeyes are still waiting to hear on Cleveland Heights WR Shelton Gibson, who has long been a Buckeye lean but has delayed his announcement date.

Meanwhile, they got more good news as star WR James Quick from Louisville will be making an official visit to Columbus this fall.

Quick has a great offer list as well, but proximity to home is not a bad thing, and the Buckeyes would love to have a player of Quick's skill set.

As tough as it is to lose Anzalone at this point in the recruiting game, it's still very, very early.

Much of the recruiting picture is still foggy and will play itself out through summer camps and into the fall.

Meyer has generated all sorts of recruiting momentum, and this is the first setback so far in the recruiting trail.

Ohio State now does have a little room to operate in a class that will be limited due to NCAA sanctions.

Anzalone could come back but even if he doesn't, Ohio State still has an outstanding class at this point.

What happens now is the icing on a cake that has already been baked very well.

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