Former Ohio State football coach off to rough start at new job

The Ohio State football program lost a coach in the middle of Spring practice. Tony Alford decided to leave the Buckeyes for Michigan to become their running backs coach. He made a lateral move for reasons that still remain unclear. The Buckeyes moved on and have already started looking at running back recruits now that Carlos Locklyn is in charge of that room.

Alford was almost let go in the offseason by Ryan Day anyway, so they weren’t that concerned with him leaving. Buckeye fans now hate him and will for the rest of his career. But Alford’s lack of recruiting ability and lack of developing NFL talent was a problem over the last few seasons. Michigan is starting to learn that the hard way.

Former Ohio State football coach has already lost a recruiting battle at Michigan

Alford has already lost his first big recruiting battle now that he’s at Michigan. He lost a battle for four-star running back Marquise Davis. It’s not the fact that he lost a recruiting battle that’s bad, it’s who he lost it to. Davis chose the University of Kentucky over Michigan. Alford isn’t even winning battles against lower-tier SEC schools.

If he can’t win recruits over bad SEC programs, how does he expect to win those battles over programs like Georgia, Alabama, LSU, or Florida? Or Ohio State, Penn State, USC, or Oregon? This is a bad start for him at his new job. Michigan fans are now seeing why Ohio State football fans were okay with Alford heading elsewhere.

The Buckeyes have moved on with Locklyn and they think he can recruit and develop backs. That’s something Ryan Day had started to question Alford could still do. We will find out who made the right move if there is ever a recruiting battle between Ohio State and Michigan for the same running back.

Only time will tell if this is just a blip on the radar for Alford.