Mark Pantoni sat behind his desk and gestured toward the poster hanging on the opposite wall of his office.
The board laid out Ohio State’s schedule for this season, a gantlet that included a series of road games against fellow national title contenders.
When Pantoni and coach Ryan Day evaluated the slate earlier this year, it shaped their approach to constructing the Buckeyes’ roster.
“Having more veteran, experienced guys who played in big games before, we felt like that needed to be an emphasis, knowing the schedule we were going to play,” said Pantoni, Ohio State football's general manager who oversees player personnel.
The Buckeyes ultimately added 17 scholarship transfers in January, the most they had ever signed in a single offseason. Nearly all of them were upperclassmen with at least three years of experience elsewhere in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
It reflected a recent phenomenon at the highest level of college football. As Big Ten teams won three straight national championships, beginning with Michigan in 2023 and continuing with Ohio State and Indiana in the subsequent years, the makeup of their rosters played a significant role in their runs. All three were built around older, experienced players.
While the Hoosiers’ title last season did not single-handedly alter the Buckeyes’ approach to roster building, it reinforced a larger shift that will be on display when Ohio State visits Indiana on Oct. 17 for a top-five rematch of last year’s conference title game.
“I do think there is something of having a veteran, older team,” Pantoni said. “That was kind of our mindset. Not specifically to Indiana, but knowing that we had that plan two years before and our rivals did as well, so over the three-year period we saw that trend.”
When the Buckeyes won it all two years ago, the core of their experience was a returning class of seniors who put off the NFL draft to remain at Ohio State.
But they lacked a similar pipeline within the program this year, as five underclassmen left early for the draft, prompting the Buckeyes to lean more heavily into the transfer portal to help establish a veteran nucleus.
The Buckeyes brought in nearly twice as much experience as they lost through the portal. The 17 additions brought a combined 12,816 career snaps to Ohio State, while the 29 departures accounted for 7,091 snaps, according to Pro Football Focus data.
On average, the incoming transfers carried 754 career snaps, compared with 245 for the program's transfer departures.
Most of the portal pickups had spent previous years at other high-profile programs. Defensive linemen Qua Russaw and James Smith and cornerback Cam Calhoun arrived from Alabama, and safety Earl Little Jr. was with the Crimson Tide for two years before transferring to Florida State in 2024. Christian Alliegro started at linebacker at Wisconsin last season.
Fourteen of the 17 transfers had been at other Power Four conference schools for at least a year before landing at Ohio State.
“Looking back now, some of the guys we brought in from the lower level, there’s been a little bit longer of a learning curve and adaptation,” Pantoni said, “whereas in this past cycle, we tended to focus more on Power Four-level players who had played a lot rather than going the small-school route.”
Their snaps in leagues such as the Big Ten and SEC offered additional value. Not only were Power Four conference players more likely to have appeared in bigger games, but they also practiced against better competition.
With the Buckeyes seeking immediate help, it was a significant factor.
“It makes a difference when you're 20, 21 years old than when you're 18, 19,” Day said.
Day stressed that newcomers often face an adjustment period after they enroll at Ohio State, acclimating to intense practices and sizable expectations.
“Anybody would tell you it's different here,” Day said. “The way we practice is different, you have to bring it every day, so when you're older, you're able to adjust quicker. I think that's happened. You're starting to see a lot of those guys build some momentum.”
The veteran transfers have made the biggest imprint on Ohio State’s defense, breaking into the starting lineup across all three levels with John Walker at defensive tackle, as well as Russaw at defensive end, Alliegro at linebacker and Little at safety. Six of the 16 players who have played more than 100 snaps on defense through six games are transfers.
Little leads the Buckeyes with 30 tackles, and Russaw’s 3.5 tackles for loss, including 2.5 in the last two games, are the third most behind defensive end Kenyatta Jackson Jr. and linebacker Riley Pettijohn, who each have four.
But the offensive side of the ball has benefited as well with Devin McCuin, a receiver from UTSA, emerging as the top pass-catching weapon behind Jeremiah Smith and Ja’Kobi Jackson, a seventh-year running back from Florida, forming one-two punch in the backfield with Bo Jackson, the Buckeyes’ returning 1,000-yard rusher.
“If you look at the average age of the guys that are actually playing,” Pantoni said, “it's probably a higher age this year than the guys who were playing last year.”
Even if Ohio State and Indiana put a premium on experience in building their rosters, their approaches diverge.
The Buckeyes’ biggest stars are homegrown players, beginning with star wide receiver Jeremiah Smith and quarterback Julian Sayin. While Sayin enrolled at Alabama in late 2023, he transferred to Ohio State just weeks later and has spent his entire career in Columbus. He is in his second year as the Buckeyes’ starting quarterback after breaking out as a Heisman Trophy finalist last season.
Meanwhile, the Hoosiers have leaned on a transfer quarterback with previous starting experience in all three seasons since Curt Cignetti took over the program.
After Ohio’s Kurtis Rourke arrived in 2024, Fernando Mendoza transferred from California to Indiana and led the Hoosiers through their historic season in 2025, winning the Heisman Trophy and helping them to capture their first national title. Josh Hoover, from TCU, was the latest import and has led the Hoosiers to a 6-0 start, extending their winning streak to 22 games.
The Hoosiers added experience at other marquee positions this past winter, including running back Turbo Richard from Boston College and wide receiver Nick Marsh from Michigan State.
“Their staff has done a very good job of bringing in guys who are mature and have played a lot of football before,” Day said. “That started off bringing in guys from James Madison, but (Cignetti’s) continued to identify not just guys who have played a lot of football but guys that fit his culture and that are good football players.”
Only one of the 13 players who followed Cignetti from James Madison to Indiana remains with the Hoosiers, a group that has since been replaced by a new wave of veteran transfers, adding to their edge in experience.
The Hoosiers began this season with the fourth-most experienced roster in the FBS, according to an analysis by CBS Sports that measured total snaps across the 138 rosters in the highest tier of Division I. Ohio State ranked 31st in the breakdown published in August.
The experience offers more than production. It also provides a level of discipline.
“If you know what you’re doing on every play and you’re not going to beat yourself, that’s 90% of the job done,” said Mason Williams, a senior tight end who transferred to Ohio State from Ohio. “And then having that physical trait brings you home.”
It might be easier said than done for teams to prioritize proven production.
The blueprint requires coaching staffs and personnel departments to identify players capable of making an impact. The talent available in the portal also varies year to year.
And then there are financial considerations.
“The portal is a lot like free agency in the NFL,” Pantoni said, “where the cost is going to be much higher than the standard market. You're going to be paying for more experience, and if they're coming from a bigger program, the demand for them may be higher. A lot of us have the same needs, and we're all looking for those type of players, so in general, you're probably having to overpay.”
The money involved has increased. While NIL compensation has been a fixture in college football throughout the 2020s, the introduction of revenue-sharing agreements between schools and players following a settlement of three antitrust lawsuits last year raised the price tag.
Ohio State must balance adding experience through the portal with keeping its prized players in the fold.
“You'd love to get the top guys in the portal, every single one at every single position,” Pantoni said, “but in this financial world, it's not possible, especially when we want to prioritize retention with our current players. It’s a complicated system.”
As the Buckeyes enter the most daunting stretch of their schedule, beginning this weekend at defending national champion Indiana and continuing with another trip to surging USC later this month, many of their new veteran pieces are clicking.
“You have seen a lot of these guys really come on,” Pantoni said. “They've helped us win a lot of games, and we're glad we brought them in.”
Joey Kaufman covers Ohio State football for The Columbus Dispatch. Email him at jkaufman@dispatch.com and follow him on @joeyrkaufman on X.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Indiana showed age matters in college football. Ohio State got older, too