After a day off on Sunday, the Ohio State football team was back on the practice field on Monday. Following practice, freshman cornerback Tyreke Johnson became the 15th Buckeye and the 10th freshman to have his black stripe removed. With the removal of the stripe, Johnson is now viewed as an official Buckeye.
⬛️? That's a #BIABlackStripe for @Im_showtime_! Welcome to #DBU ‼️#GoBucks #WinTheMoment pic.twitter.com/J4G7Xhiy14
— Ohio State Football (@OhioStateFB) August 20, 2018
While Johnson is a very talented cornerback, he earned the honor thanks to his work on special teams, specifically the kick blocking arena.
As is the practice for black stripe removals, when a player is called up, his “big brother” comes up as well and removes the black stripe. In the video above, Johnson’s big brother Damon Arnette initially took the helmet, but redshirt freshman Shaun Wade wrestled it away from him and removed the black stripe.
While Arnette might be Johnson’s big brother on the team, Wade and Johnson have grown up together and also played together at Trinity Catholic Academy in Jacksonville, Florida.
“That’s my cousin,” Johnson said of Wade back in the winter. “Not my real cousin, but blood couldn’t make us any closer. That’s my brother. When you see Shaun, you see me. When you see me, you see Shaun. We were always together. You could look at all of our visits, we always took them together. Everything, so words can’t describe our relationship.”
Johnson said that he even asked Wade’s permission to join him at Ohio State.
“It’s kind of like, with Shaun, when you are going to marry a girl, you’ve got to ask for her father’s permission,” he said. “So, Shaun was here first and this is his, you know, so I had to ask for his permission to come and join the Ohio State family.”
As you can see in the video above, Wade has no regrets about allowing Johnson to become a Buckeye.
There are now 16 members of the 2018 recruiting class still holding onto their black stripes.
They are QB Matthew Baldwin*, WR Kamryn Babb (inj.), CB Sevyn Banks*, CB Cameron Brown, DE Tyler Friday, HB Jaelen Gill, SAF Marcus Hooker, DT Antwuan Jackson*, DE Javontae Jean-Baptiste, C Matthew Jones*, OT Nicholas Petit-Frere, LB K’Vaughan Pope, SAF Josh Proctor, WR Blue Smith, DE Alex Williams, and OT Max Wray*.
* signifies early enrollee
Black Stripe Chart
March 30 – DL Aaron Cox (walk-on)
March 30 – WR De’Shawn White (walk-on)
April 11 – DT Tommy Togiai
August 8 – LB Dallas Gant
August 9 – TE Tate Duarte (walk-on)
August 9 – LB Teradja Mitchell
August 11 – RB Brian Snead
August 11 – QB Kory Curtis (walk-on)
August 11 – DT Taron Vincent
August 13 – WR Chris Olave
August 15 – RB Amari McMahon (walk-on)
August 18 – DE Tyreke Smith
August 18 – RB Master Teague
August 18 – TE Jeremy Ruckert
August 20 – CB Tyreke Johnson
