Cam Calhoun has already lived one of the more unusual paths in college football, and now he’s back where it started.
The Ohio State cornerback, a Cincinnati native, is no stranger to the baggage that comes with “The Game.” He knew exactly what it meant when he committed to TTUN at the “Shoe” during the 2022 rivalry matchup, a game Michigan won 45-23. But now that he’s in Columbus, Calhoun says he sees that moment very differently.
He didn’t try to dress it up. Calhoun called the decision “childish” and said it came from not getting an offer from Ryan Day out of Winton Woods.
“It was a mistake on how I did it. I feel like everything I did had a purpose.
Just me committing on the field was kind of just like a childish thing,” Calhoun told Eleven Warriors. “Me and Coach Day talked about that as I was coming in, and I feel like that's something that we both have now decided, just because of the work and the process and the trust I'm starting to gain within the team.
But, yeah, I feel like it was just a childish thing. I didn't get the offer (from Ohio State), so I kind of just reacted.
But God put me in this position now, so I'm just thankful.”
That apology matters because not many players come back and own a moment like that so directly. Day apparently didn’t let the past get in the way, and Calhoun’s path since then has helped explain why.
He’s taken a winding route to Ohio State, with stops at TTUN, a Kyle Whittingham-coached Utah program that named Morgan Scalley the coach-in-waiting the summer before the season, and Kalen DeBoer’s Crimson Tide last year.
This season, though, Calhoun gives the Buckeyes something they don’t usually get: a player who has seen both sides of this rivalry and has spent time in a Whittingham-led locker room as well as one in Ann Arbor.
His time at Michigan came during a championship season under Jim Harbaugh, though Calhoun played only 13 defensive snaps that year. The more meaningful stop was his 2024 season at Utah, where he got a real feel for what a Whittingham team is about and logged most of his defensive snaps. At Alabama last year, he was mostly used on special teams.
That background gives Ohio State some useful perspective heading into Week 13. Calhoun has been in the kind of locker rooms that can reveal how programs operate from the inside, and he brings a view of the rivalry that very few Buckeyes can claim.
The caveat is that not all of that information is fresh. Calhoun doesn’t know what Jay Hill is about, and he played for Jesse Minter in Maize and Blue, so the current schemes won’t line up perfectly with what he remembers.
Even so, the Buckeyes now have one of the rare players who has gone from Ann Arbor to Columbus. This century, there have only been three. Calhoun is one of them, and Ohio State will hope that unusual background can be put to use when it matters most.
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