Gee Scott Jr, 4* 2020 WR, Bellevue (Eastside Catholic), WA (Offered 6/19)

FRISCO, Texas – There’s a viewing deck above the north end zone in the Dallas Cowboys’ practice facility that is the perfect spot to film on-field activities. If you saw the highlights of four-star wide receiver Gee Scott Jr. from The Opening earlier this month, there’s a good chance the footage was taken from that vantage point.

While Scott was making even the most elite defensive backs in the 2020 recruiting class look silly, you’d hear reporters murmuring from behind their camcorders.

1. How on earth is this kid not a five-star prospect?

2. How could it have possibly taken Washington so long to offer such an elite prospect from the Seattle area?

The second question is far more important than the first, and Ohio State, who earned a commitment from Scott on Christmas Day in 2018, is glad Washington dragged its feet. Buckeyes receiver coach Brian Hartline identified Scott — who stars at powerhouse Eastside Catholic in suburban Sammamish — as a top-tier 2020 wide receiver more than a year ago, and Ohio State offered Scott a scholarship during an unofficial visit to Columbus in October. Soon after, a time during which Scott’s recruitment was about to explode, Washington’s coaches visited Eastside Catholic and sat down with every top athlete on the team except for Scott.

Why? Nobody knows for sure, though that decision could wind up haunting Chris Petersen and his staff for the next three or four years. It would have taken a two-minute visit — even if the Huskies’ staff wasn’t sure about offering yet — to alter Scott’s thinking. Instead, Scott went home that day in November, looked his father in the eye and said, “I’m going to Ohio State. They believe in me.”

“That is how the decision was made,” Scott’s father, Gee Scott Sr., told The Athletic. “That’s the real story right there.”

Scott (6 feet 3, 207 pounds) currently is one of the top-15 receivers in the class as well a consensus top-70 prospect nationally. After his performance at The Opening and other camps during the summer, it’s seemingly a foregone conclusion that he’s going to end up a five-star prospect. And that prospect would be a Washington commitment had the Huskies’ staff offered — and that was evident in the commitment video the Scotts put together in case Gee announced for the Huskies. That video ended with Scott wearing purple foam Husky claws on his hands, but it obviously never saw the light of day, given Washington didn’t offer until last month, six months after he committed to the Buckeyes.

In college football, where keeping the most talented prospects home is paramount, that is borderline indefensible. Washington hired a new wide receivers coach, Junior Adams, in January and he spent six months getting to know Scott before the Huskies offered, but it was too late. Some wonder if the Huskies will get back into the picture now that Eastside Catholic four-star running back Sam Adams II has committed to Washington, but that doesn’t seem likely.

The Scotts were hurt and confused by Washington’s actions. Scott Sr. said he feels as if his son has developed a bad reputation in the Seattle area for celebrating too much. But as Ohio State’s coaches are fond of saying, they’d rather pull the reins on a dog rather than have to teach the dog how to hunt. That competitive fire is a desirable trait, and it’s not as if Scott has had any off-field incidents. Scott, by all accounts, is a confident, personable and talented football prospect.

You can say what you want about Washington’s decision-making and that perhaps Scott wasn’t a good fit for the Huskies. Scott Sr. is a self-made radio personality in Seattle who does some work with the Seattle Seahawks, so maybe Petersen and his staff weren’t fond of the family dynamic. It’s all speculation until Petersen is allowed to publicly address his 2020 class in December.

“I think they had the wrong opinion of him,” Scott Sr. said of Washington. “I don’t know where it came from. I think there was a narrative about my son as far as maybe being immature, but I think there is a narrative about the average 14- or 15-year-olds as they mature. It took the wide receiver coach, the new one, Junior Adams, to get hired. He is the first coach on that staff who took the time to get to know my son and what he found out was, ‘Oh, he’s a pretty good kid.’ I think that kind of sparked the offer. I don’t know if that’s the reason it all happened this way, but that’s just (my) opinion.”

As for Washington’s offer to Scott in June?

“I am definitely appreciative of the Washington coaching staff willing to take a chance on me, willing to say, ‘Hey, I think you’d be good for my team,’ ” Scott said. “But that is not going to do anything with my recruiting process. I am a Buckeye and I am going to be a Buckeye for life.”

Ohio State has built a roster by picking its spots nationally and grabbing talent from coast to coast. There was an opening with Scott, and Hartline pounced on it. Hartline found someone he wanted in his receivers room, identified Scott early and closed before Washington could get into the picture. Had this happened in reverse, where a high-end Columbus-area prospect chose Washington because Ohio State didn’t make the effort, the Buckeyes would be in for just as much criticism.

Now Scott is a part of an OSU 2020 recruiting class that could have the best collection of receivers in the history of modern-day recruiting; the committed receivers are five-star prospect Julian Fleming of Catawissa (Pa.) Southern Columbia — the No. 1-rated receiver in the country – and four-star recruits Scott, Mookie Cooper of St. Louis Trinity Catholic and Jaxon Smith-Njigba of Rockwall (Texas) High. All four are national top-100 prospects, and all but Smith-Njigba are in the top 70.

As for not being a five-star prospect, “I guess I am not good enough yet. I have more work to do,” Scott said. “The more work I put in, the more peoples’ eyes I start to open. Maybe (the rating) will change, but right now I have the mentality of a four-star and I just have to work my tail off. And when I am a five-star, I am going to continue to work my tail off. …

“Those people who do the ratings, they are professionals and I have nothing bad to say about them. Maybe they see something in my game that needs improvement. … I get texts all the time. It bothers me because I know what I got. It bothers me because I know what I got, but it’s a beauty at the same time because I know my potential and I know where I could be. It’s just a matter of everybody finding out.”

When everyone finds out, it’s going to happen in Columbus. And you can bet Washington will be watching.