Ohio State’s early enrollees met the media last week, there’s been lots of coaching staff drama in Ann Arbor and Joe Burrow is about to play in the Super Bowl.

We discuss all of those topics on this week’s episode of Real Pod Wednesdays – but first, we share our thoughts on the new turf at Ohio Stadium and our favorite fan-submitted designs.

After projecting which players would be the stars of the 2022 recruiting class on last week’s episode, we got the opportunity to meet more than half of the class when early enrollees met with the media last week, and we share our biggest takeaways (beginning at 4:18) from those conversations, including new insight on which positions Caden Curry and Gabe Powers might play, how Devin Brown already looks like a natural in the spotlight and an interesting comment about how athletic George Fitzpatrick is.

We also discuss (at 18:08) why Sevyn Banks chose to enter the transfer portal rather than enter the 2022 NFL draft and why leaving Ohio State probably wasn’t solely his decision.

After that (starting at 25:00), we shift our attention up north to Ann Arbor following an eventful week in which Jim Harbaugh returned to Michigan after interviewing with the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings, but Josh Gattis became the second coordinator to leave the Wolverines in as many weeks. Are things already falling apart for the Wolverines after last season’s College Football Playoff run, and how much of a threat to Ohio State will they be this year? We discuss our early expectations for the Buckeyes’ biggest rival and who else could potentially emerge as Ohio State’s top competition in the Big Ten.

Then (beginning at 37:17) we look southwest to Cincinnati and furthermore to Los Angeles, where the Bengals and six former Ohio State players – four of whom actually finished their college careers at Ohio State – are set to play in the Super Bowl on Sunday. We give our takes on the ongoing debate on whether Joe Burrow should be considered a Buckeye and make our predictions for whether Burrow, Eli Apple, Vonn Bell, Sam Hubbard, Isaiah Prince, Keandre Jones and the rest of the Bengals can beat the Los Angeles Rams this weekend.

Finally (51:10), we end the show as we usually do this time of year by talking about Ohio State men’s basketball, coming off of what might have been its most impressive performance so far in 2022 against Maryland and going into a pair of challenging road tests this week against Rutgers and Michigan.