Some players find their college destination through exhaustive campus visits and late-night family deliberations. But Carnell Tate’s journey to Ohio State never really involved much of a choice at all. It was always going to be Columbus, even when the rest of the recruiting world didn’t know it yet. The Chicago native had his heart set on the Scarlet and Gray long before coaches started flooding his phone with scholarship offers.

Indiana center Pat Coogan, who played alongside Carnell Tate at Marist High School just outside Chicago, recently revealed just how deep those Buckeye roots run. Coogan said Tate told him before he had any offers that Ohio State was his dream school. Coogan, who played at Notre Dame before transferring to Indiana, faced his old teammate multiple times over the ye

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