J.T. Barrett Ohio State closeup run action

Texas native J.T. Barrett chose Ohio State over LSU, but he never was offered a scholarship by Texas or Texas A&M.

(Marvin Fong, The Plain Dealer)

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- In the summer of 2011, J.T. Barrett and his high school football coach drove 300 miles through the Texas heat to a one-day football camp at the University of Texas.

The purpose of the trip, Jim Garfield believed, was for the best leader he had coached to be offered a scholarship by the homestate Longhorns.

At the end of the camp, Barrett and Garfield drove back to their hometown of Wichita Falls, fourth-and-a-half hours north of Austin, without an offer.

That was the first step toward making Barrett an Ohio State Buckeye.

"There was some real interest, it just didn't unfold," Garfield said by phone Thursday. "The University of Texas was working him very hard, but they didn't offer him a scholarship. I think it bothered him a little bit because he was a Texas kid."

Did either Texas or Texas A&M, the two powers in his homestate, ever come through with an offer?

"Nope," Barrett told cleveland.com in the moments after his fifth college start at Maryland last week.

Why not?

"I don't know. You're asking the wrong guy," Barrett said.

When Texas cracked open that door, Barrett was able to become the right guy for the Buckeyes.

He was the first quarterback recruited to Columbus by Urban Meyer and his offensive coordinator, quarterbacks coach and lead recruiter in Texas, Tom Herman. Now five starts into his college career for the No. 15 Buckeyes (4-1), the redshirt freshman looks like the ideal guy to have stepped in when Braxton Miller suffered a season-ending shoulder injury two weeks before the opener.

Barrett easily could have been somewhere else.

"I think J.T. would be the first to admit that I think early in the recruiting process, had the University of Texas offered him, he probably would have committed to them. But they didn't," Herman said.

Once Barrett did commit to Ohio State in April of 2012, with LSU the other primary contender, Herman remained worried about other schools swooping in. But by then, Herman had already taken advantage of the chance to get to know Barrett, a chance he wouldn't have had if the Longhorns had acted differently.

"That's one of the reasons you try to get entrenched in a relationship with a young man, to avoid those late attempts by some other schools to try to poach your guy," Herman said. "You try to hope your relationship is strong enough that whoever it may be, that's not going to happen."

By that time, there was no worry. Barrett and his father had taken an unofficial visit to Columbus for the spring game in 2012 and liked what they saw. But at the start, like for most top quarterbacks, the in-state college power had a strong pull.

Among quarterbacks ranked among the 100 players in their recruiting class by Rivals.com in the last decade, the average distance traveled for college is fewer than 400 miles.

Texas fit that for Barrett. When that wasn't an option, it became a choice between LSU, 570 miles from home, and Columbus, more than 1,000 miles, from home. (Baylor, 200 miles away in Waco, also offered).

And that's when the type of person Barrett is opened him up to anything.

"I think it was just more my personality," Barrett said. "I think oftentimes people in Texas want to stay in Texas, knowing that there are great programs there, and also having their family come to games and things like.

"But I'm one of those guys like, 'Wherever winning's at, that's where I'm trying to be.'"

"J.T. is an adventurous young man," Garfield said. "He was never going to limit himself to a geographic area."

But getting a Texas quarterback to Ohio is difficult enough that Herman and the Buckeyes did whatever it took in what Herman, a former graduate assistant at Texas who has been recruiting the state since 2001, called a unique recruitment.

First, Herman's jokes didn't work.

"I pride myself on the ability to connect with kids and have fun and mix business with pleasure if you will, but J.T. was all business, that's for sure. There was no goofing around," Herman said, remembering what he called his awkward attempts. "I don't remember joking with him one time during the recruiting process. He's a pretty serious dude."

Then after that visit for the 2012 spring game, the Barretts called and wanted to commit without Herman ever seeing the recruit throw in person.

"We were a little taken aback," Herman said. "It's a little outside of protocol to take a commitment from a kid we haven't seen throw in person.

"We took it then, just simply because I knew he had been to LSU and had been to Baylor and to some other places, and LSU was asking him to commit rather frequently and very passionately.

"LSU was the biggest one I felt threatened by. And I knew if we hemmed and hawed, we might lose him."

This was a risk worth taking. So Herman, Meyer and the Buckeyes relied on the extensive film they had watched and the word of many who had seen him throw, including Garfield.

"I think you'll be pleased once you see him spin the ball live," said Garfield, now the head coach at Elgin High School near Austin, who had known Herman for several years.

"His high school coach, who I thank to this day, he was honest with me and he was right," Herman said. "That was a very good lesson in Recruiting 101. Find somebody that you trust that is going to tell you the truth."

And Barrett was a lesson in how the Buckeyes go about finding quarterbacks.

Herman said you start with the top quarterbacks in the country and judge their interest in Ohio State. Barrett's interest was reciprocated. You then narrow the scope to somewhere around eight quarterbacks as you continue to test that.

"You've got to have a cost-benefit analysis of how you're going to spend your time and who you're going to use your time on," Herman said.

"It's quarterbacks that you think you can win a national championship with and they have a genuine interest level in you. And I think you just continue to narrow the scope until you find those three, four, five kids that meet that criteria from you to them and them to you."

This time, the kid from Texas, without a Texas offer, fit that.

So when Barrett's parents saw him play against Cincinnati in the Buckeyes' fourth game, it was their first time watching him in person as a Buckeye. If Barrett had made another choice, they'd be able to see him more often.

"It was great having them there, just having that support, seeing my mom smile and my dad smile, watching me play, that was great," Barrett said. "But my mom and dad, coming in as far as recruiting, they knew how I felt, and I told them that, and they respected my decision to come to Ohio State, so there was no problem."

Texas meanwhile, wound up offering and getting another in-state quarterback from that one-day camp in 2011 - Tyrone Swoopes. A sophomore, he is 1-3 as a starter this season. And now some are calling for a switch to freshman Jerrod Heard - another Texas quarterback from the Class of 2013 who was recruited by Ohio State.

Meanwhile, 1,000 miles away, Barrett is making a new home.

"What I thought about was I wanted to go play where I think I would be able to win a national championship and play with the best," Barrett said, echoing his thoughts from the day he committed.

"I felt like at Ohio State we were going to have the people and the personnel and the coaches to compete every year for a national championship."