At the end of June, the Oklahoma Sooners were ranked 35th in 247Sports team recruiting rankings and many people thought the sky was falling. The Sooners were doomed. It was as if we had learned nothing from the Lincoln Riley departure and the following recruit-exodus: It’s not so easy to kill the Sooners.
On June 30, I even wrote an article telling everyone to relax. “Rankings mean absolutely nothing in June,” I said.
Just a week and a half later, Oklahoma’s on the verge of a top 10 recruiting class. The Sooners are now 11th in 247Sports’ recruiting rankings for the class of 2023 and are in the running for several more high-end recruits. The only Big 12 team the Sooners trail in recruiting for 2023 is the Longhorns.
What does this mean?
[autotag]Lincoln Riley[/autotag]’s departure hit the Sooners just as hard on the recruiting trail as it did on the field. Riley was a great recruiter, and USC will no doubt benefit from that.
Something that Riley excels at is his usage of social media in this modern age of college football. That seemed like something OU was going to miss. However, the new staff appears to have picked up where Riley left off on social media, and the commits themselves are helping out.
Here’s what Sooners QB commit [autotag]Jackson Arnold[/autotag] had to say when [autotag]Adepoju Adebawore[/autotag] committed:
And we aren’t done yet. https://t.co/G5DHefmCx2 pic.twitter.com/kaEPLVzb7s
— Jackson Arnold (@_JacksonArnold_) July 10, 2022
Players who are undecided are absolutely swayed by what others in their class decide. Oklahoma has already gotten past the hard part: getting the first few recruits.
OU will continue to scoop up these young men. It will be interesting to see both where OU ends up falling in the final rankings and what Brent Venables’ staff ends up molding these recruits into.
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