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- When Mark Sanchez was in high school, he was deciding between Ohio State and USC.
- The reason that he didn’t end up with the Buckeyes is very simple.
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Mark Sanchez was the No. 1 quarterback recruit in the Class of 2005. As a five-star prospect, he could have gone anywhere in the country.
The 6-foot-4, 210-pound righty had offers from Notre Dame, Florida, Stanford and Texas, among others. However, his recruitment came down to USC and Ohio State. He ultimately chose the former.
Sanchez, a Mission Viejo, California-native, recently joined the Dan Patrick Show and explained why he chose the Trojans over the Buckeyes. It came down to one thing.
Ohio State rolled out the red carpet for Sanchez but the weather changed his mind.
“I went to Texas, Ohio State, Notre Dame,” he said. “I looked at UCLA briefly, but yeah. (Former Texas head coach) Mack Brown was great, hard to say no to. But (former Ohio State head coach) Jim Tressel, I remember. We were in the Horseshoe, they had the band. I had an Ohio State jersey. They put my highlight tape up on the (video board). The audio dubbed Keith Jackson’s voice over it and it was supposed to be like the Rose Bowl, and they were showing my high school highlights on this thing. And I was like, ‘I’m a Buckeye. Done. Done deal.’ I hear Keith Jackson, ‘The young sophomore from Southern California.’ And I was like, ‘Wow.’
And we’re in Tressel’s office and I’m like, ‘This is it. I’m about to sign a paper and I’m going to be a Buckeye.’ Then he said, ‘You know, it’s awesome. Every year, we play Michigan right around Thanksgiving. Ten years in a row, great football weather. It’s been snowing every game.’ And I was like, ‘What?’ I looked at my dad, I said, ‘What did he just say?’ I was like, ‘Snow? We’ve got to drive to Big Bear (Lake, California), for snow.’ I was like, ‘I’m out.’ So that was pretty funny. That really just changed my kind of mind right there.”
In retrospect, Sanchez laughs that his decision should have been about more than it being cold and snowy in Columbus, Ohio.
“It’s silly now, looking back,” he said. “I’m like, ‘What a moron.’ But I didn’t — you look at the jerseys, you look at the coaches. You look at, ‘OK, what am I going to do here?’ It’s, ‘Get an education, great.’ I didn’t think twice about the weather. No clue.”
Ultimately, Sanchez won a Rose Bowl and became the first USC quarterback since 1990 to leave college early for the NFL and was drafted fifth overall, so it all worked out.