The Ohio State Buckeyes are gearing up for another College Football Playoff run and hope to return to the national championship stage just one season removed from winning it all.
A big piece of that run was wideout Jeremiah Smith, who is still the leader of the locker room heading into his junior season, which will likely be his last in Columbus before heading to the NFL.
However, last season’s untimely end in the Cotton Bowl with a loss to the Miami Hurricanes created some uncomfortable circumstances for Buckeyes fans. Smith was rumored to be entertaining a possible entry into the transfer portal. To make matters worse, the loudest rumors were from Miami, where Smith is from and nearly signed with as a high school recruit.
Fortunately, Smith’s commitment to Ohio State hasn’t wavered, and the former national champion is sticking around for one more season in Columbus. While speaking to the media during spring practice, Smith clarified that he didn’t see himself leaving Ohio State, but one program pushed hard to get him to enter the portal.
“I wasn’t surprised,” Smith said. “I knew, especially at the end of that game (the Cotton Bowl), that a certain program was going to come at me very hard. Not gonna say no names, I think everybody here knows who it was. But I wasn’t goin’ nowhere.”
It doesn’t take much effort to connect the dots and figure out that the team is likely Miami, which fell in the national championship to Indiana last season. Smith starred at Chaminade-Madonna Prep in Miami as a recruit before signing with the Buckeyes. After Ohio State’s offensive coordinator and receivers coach Brian Hartline left to become the head coach at South Florida, Smith, as well as top recruit Chris Henry Jr., worried Ohio State fans with their silence around their commitments to the program.
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On Saturday, Smith put any question of his loyalty to rest.
“No,” Smith said when asked about possibly leaving during the offseason.. “I was always going to be at Ohio State.”
Henry also wound up signing with the Buckeyes and the duo will make Ohio State one of the favorites to win the Big Ten and the championship again this season. Smith is coming off another All-American season with 87 catches for 1,243 yards and 12 touchdowns. He’ll be a top-10 pick next offseason in the 2027 NFL Draft, but his focus is now squarely on bringing another title back to Columbus and putting the transfer portal noise behind him.