After narrowing his seemingly endless choice of Div. I schools down to five – Georgia, LSU, Notre Dame, Ohio State, and Oklahoma – 17-year-old German phenom Hero Kanu announced that he has decided to attend Ohio State.
The 6’5″, 290-pound from Geltendorf, Germany, who grew up playing soccer and only switched to football in his mid teens, plays for Santa Margarita Catholic High School in California. The teenager accumulated more than 25 scholarship offers throughout the recruiting process following a season which saw him finish as the 18th-rated defensive lineman and 105th overall prospect in the entire class of 2022 according to the 247Sports Composite Rankings. He finished his senior campaign with 55 total tackles, and nine sacks.
BOOM ‼️
newest member of the Rushmen – @HeroKanu 😤#BOOM22 pic.twitter.com/zTPQWvilQi
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) January 8, 2022
Kanu’s head coach at Santa Margarita Catholic, Anthony Rouzier had this to say about him:
“Hero is an extremely talented young man with an enormous amount of potential. He has great size, explosion, strength, lateral quickness, heavy hands and a high football IQ. He can stay low and strike through opponents — providing the necessary knock back to win the Line of scrimmage. He has very good flexibility for his size, particularly in his ankles which enables him to bend effectively to turn the corner and in stunts and games. He’s a leader on the field, and has a high motor.
“At Ohio State he will get to be a part of a culture that is as good as anywhere in the country. You can see it’s a relationship driven place where the coaches take great pride in developing their players. Coach Johnson is as good as any DL coach in America and he has built a great relationship with Hero, and will undoubtedly hit the sweet spot in tapping into Hero’s potential. Coach Day continues to build on the tradition of The Ohio State University by respecting its history but being his own authentic self. Those factors play a much bigger role than the mere prestige of the program. The connection with the people was most important: coaches, players, staff and Ohio State/Columbus community are vital to his decision.”
Kanu was discovered in Germany less than three years ago by Brandon Collier, founder of PPI Recruits, and he is definitely high on the young German, a “three technique” lineman who can play every down:
“In terms of recruiting and rankings, he’s the biggest European recruit ever.”
