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PICKERINGTON, Ohio – The garage door cranks open promptly at 9:45 a.m. This breaks up the rhythm of the calls from the mourning doves – the only sound on a breezy September morning in the neighborhood.
Within seconds, the in-home gym is revealed. A green carpet, a training ladder, weights of all sizes, and a Run Rocket. There is a poster of a sixth-grade championship team. A few minutes later, Edmund McAllister III – a freshman running back at Pickerington Central High School – walks outside. He stretches out while his father Edmund McAllister Jr. leans back into a chair.
McAllister is 5-foot-8, 176 pounds. The 15 year old is wearing a United States Olympic Team T-shirt and tossing a football between his hands. This is the future five-star running back starter kit.
It's a silent routine with his father. A few minutes later, McAllister's legs are drumming through the ladder. He receives directions ahead of the pop-up defender bag in the driveway.
"Jump cut!"
"Double trouble!"
McAllister makes the sharp cut between the bag and his sister's pink-and-white bicycle and pulls up before getting into the street. This is life for a future blue-chip recruit.
McAllister is one of the best high school running backs in Ohio. He is the next big-time recruit on the two-school Pickerington pipeline, one that sent Jack Sawyer (Pickerington North) and Ty Hamilton (Pickerington Central) to the 2025 NFL Draft. Ohio State linebacker Sonny Styles and cornerback Lorenzo Styles Jr. and Pitt linebacker Rasheem Biles are on deck. McAllister – who is better known as E-Mac in "Picktown" – watched those players from the sideline in grade school. Now it's his turn.
MORE: Ranking the best Ohio State players of all-time
The new-aged process of being a potential five-star recruit is more complicated than ever. Edmund and Tori McAllister are part of that process, which now entails social media, thousands of miles in the car and now, a new law in Ohio that temporarily permits high school athletes to benefit from Name, Image and Likeness.
"You have to fall in love with the process," McAllister Jr. told The Sporting News.
When did this process start for E-Mac? His father knows the age.
"Five."
That is hard to comprehend, even in a youth sports industrial complex overrun with overzealous parents screaming from the sidelines, premature social media-driven hype and countless cautionary stories; the tale with the Todd Marinovich tagline still tossed around today.
But it is true. McAllister III is not a word-of-mouth player. He has been a star on the football field for nearly 10 years – and he is a freshman in high school. He has 42,400 Instagram followers. That's almost twice as many as Ohio State freshman running back Bo Jackson, who leads the nation's No. 1 team in rushing. The highlight reels are impressive, but so is the process toward becoming a four- or five-star running back. There is a blue-chip blueprint in place.
The driveway workout reveals what nobody else sees. McAllister III is a special talent at running back who is putting in the work that accounts for the margin between gifted and great; the work that goes into that coveted five-star rating that goes unnoticed. In this case, McAllister's parents are staying on that path.
"Focus on having fun and blocking out all the distractions," McAllister III told SN. "That's the main thing. Have fun. That's what made me fall in love with the game. I just try to block out everything around me and keep playing the game. That's how I'm able to perform on Friday nights."
Who is Edmund McAllister III? Meet star freshman running back
Dave Purpura, a high school sports reporter for the Columbus Dispatch, has covered football in Ohio for 25 years. Yet Purpura had to double-check the program the first time he saw E-Mac play in 2025.
"He runs like an upperclassman," Purpura told SN. "The way that he sees holes and has that burst, you do have to double check – like 'This is this kid's fifth game?' It was extremely impressive."
McAllister had four carries for four TDs on Sept. 12 against Logan. He followed that up with 24 carries for 144 yards and three TDs in a 43-30 victory against Canal Winchester.
"It felt like little league when I would get the ball and continue to take control over the game," McAllister said of that breakout performance.
The @PCTigerFootball looked comfortable in this high-scoring affair vs Canal Winchester, Fantastic Freshman @Emac2029 (140+ yds/3 TD's) and QB @Qb1_rocco (2) rushing TD's and 1 passing TD as the Tigers out duel Canal (43-30) to move to 4-1 on the season 🐯‼️ pic.twitter.com/q2X6RpoIYk
— Central Ohio High School Showcase (@TheCOHSS) September 21, 2025McAllister totaled 1,177 all-purpose yards with 15 TDs in 10 regular-season games. He averaged 7.4 yards per carry. McAllister was one of the top performers at the Best of the Midwest Combine in Indianapolis in February, according to On.3 com's Steve Wiltfong. On top of all that, the freshman has a 4.37 grade point average.
"He's our strongest running back – and he's (15)," Pickerington Central coach Jeff Lomonico told SN. "He's a non-stop worker. Great kid. Great grades. You don't have to worry about anything."
McAllister Jr. is the head coach at Ridgeview Junior High School, which feeds into Central, and this hype has been building since E-Mac played at the youth levels. He ran the 100-meter dash in 11.26 in eighth grade. Will he follow the same path to high-level college football as those past Pickerington standouts?
"I think so just because of the intelligence factor," Purpura said. "That was one of the things I thought about when I saw him against Canal. That was really when you got a sense, that 'Hey, this kid has a knack and he can possibly take over a game if he needs to.' He certainly did that night."
Eddie Jackson
Managing social media, NIL in high school
Edmund and Tori McAllister manage their son's accounts. The attention on E-Mac in Pickerington has been constant since youth football, and that attention will increase when the first set of star ratings are given for 2029 recruits.
"We'll see how he adjusts to all the noise that comes with him being so good," Lomonico said. "Hopefully, he's expecting that. I would think he's expecting that."
That could come in the form of Name, Image and Likeness. On Oct. 20, Judge Jaiza Page issued a temporary restraining order that allows Ohio high school athletes to benefit from NIL. Jamier Brown – a five-star receiver from Huber Heights Wayne High School and an Ohio State commit – sued the Ohio High School Athletic Association on Oct. 15. The OHSAA will vote on a referendum from Nov. 17-21.
MORE: How does NIL money work for college athletes?
Edmund McAllister would support the decision to allow student-athletes to benefit from NIL in high school.
"I support the ruling 100%," he said. "I always feel like if kid actors can make money why can't amateur athletes make money off their Name, Image and Likeness?"
This is the trickle-down business model from college football, and it was inevitable. Then again, recruits on the level of E-Mac are subject to recruiting rankings and constant attention before they get to high school.
"We've been to places in Texas and in Georgia where people know who he is and stop and ask to take pictures," McAllister Jr. said. "Is that E-Mac from Ohio?"
Who wouldn't explore NIL opportunities if it is permitted in the future?
The McAllisters spend a lot of time in the car traveling to football camps. McAllister attended the local Under Armour prospects camp along with summer camps at Ohio State, Michigan, Kent State and Kentucky last summer. He's received four FBS offers – Grambling, Kent State, South Florida and UTSA – before playing his first high school down. That number will dramatically increase with each summer. McAllister is quick to point out, however, that the benefits are not the purpose.
"The big thing is education," McAllister said. "The money is going to come. If you do it the right way with hard work, the money is always going to be there."
What's next for Edmund McAllister III?
Tori McAllister recalls a story from when the family lived in Arlington, Texas, before moving to Pickerington. E-Mac was two years old.
"We were coming from day care and I was picking him up and we would have to pass the Cowboys Stadium," Tori said. "He asked me, 'What was it?' and I told him that was the Cowboys Stadium. He said to me at two, 'I'm going to play there someday.'"
Even if he doesn't remember it, McAllister has worked toward that moment ever since, and Tori and Edmund McAllister have been on the same page with the development of their son. It's a faith-based family.
"Just making sure we have a lot of structure around him at all times has helped the discipline throughout the years and his perseverance and resilience," Tori said. "Dad and I being the No. 1 fans and allowing him to understand and how to quiet down the outside noise and focus on things within the home is pretty much the recipe to what you're seeing now. I wouldn't say it's always been easy, but it's always been consistent.”
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Edmund continues to pass on his own experiences. He was a star running back at Muskegon Catholic Central and played at Saginaw Valley State. He trained by running on the sand dunes near Lake Michigan. Pickerington does not have sand dunes, but the workout in the driveway is not the only place where you might find E-Mac on Sunday morning. He might be running up the hill behind the Pickerington library. Or in the weight room. Or watching game film.
"I told him I'm going to be your No. 1 fan, but I'm always going to be his hardest critic," McAllister Jr. said. "Sometimes he gets down, but the older he gets he's starting to understand."
What's next for McAllister? Pickerington Central starts another run in the Division I playoffs next week. McAllister will get a high star rating in the spring, and there will be another summer full of camps and training. More followers. Perhaps NIL opportunities. All that, and he doesn't even have a driver's license yet.
"Teams are going to have to game plan for him,” Lomonico said. "They're going to have to make a choice. He can catch the ball out of the backfield, too. He's humble but he's confident. He knows he's good – but he's not disrespectful or anything like that. He's just a great kid."
In between sprints on the Run Rocket, E-Mac talks about those dreams. He watches Barry Sanders clips. There is an intense focus at all times, but for those looking for the why – McAllister occasionally breaks character with a smile – one that says that he had, indeed, fallen in love with the process.
"Attack each day," McAllister III said. "Day by day. Just to win every day."
English (US)