{"id":406223,"date":"2026-01-14T07:49:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-14T07:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/406223\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T07:49:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T07:49:07","slug":"ohio-state-safety-malik-hartford-commits-to-ucla","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/406223\/","title":{"rendered":"Ohio State safety Malik Hartford commits to UCLA"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/247sports.com\/college\/ohio-state\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Ohio State<\/a> transfer safety <a href=\"https:\/\/247sports.com\/Player\/malik-hartford-46125498\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Malik Hartford<\/a> has committed to UCLA.<\/p>\n<p>Hartford spent three years with the Buckeyes, playing in backup role as a freshman and sophomore but then suffering an injury this season which sidelined him for all but four games. He was able to gain a redshirt from this year, so he&#8217;ll have two more seasons of eligibility.<\/p>\n<p>In those three seasons with the Buckeyes, he amassed 20 tackles and three passes defended.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Hartford was very highly regarded out of high school, rated a four-star with a 96 rating, ranking him as the No. 69 overall player and the No. 5 safety in the country. The 6&#8217;2, 200-pounder didn&#8217;t have it come together at Ohio State, and he&#8217;s now a three-star transfer and rated an 86.<\/p>\n<p>UCLA has already added quite a bit in the safety room out of the Portal, including Iowa State safety Ta&#8217;Shawn James and Utah safety Tao Johnson, not to mention retaining Scooter Jackson and Cole Martin, so there figures to be some fierce competition for playing time there.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ohio State transfer safety Malik Hartford has committed to UCLA. Hartford spent three years with the Buckeyes, playing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":406224,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-406223","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-ncaafootball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406223","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=406223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406223\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/406224"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}