NORMAN, Okla. — The push to the early national signing day is on.
Coaches across the country can start making their rounds to recruits’ schools and into their homes.
Oklahoma, and others playing for their conference championship games, won’t have the same time to get on the road to recruit like their competitors currently are.
Recruiting is at the fore front of the Sooners’ latest push back into the conversation with the elite of college football. Lincoln Riley was asked about losing this week to hit the recruiting trail hard at his weekly press conference on Monday.
“It’s tough,” he said. “We knew this was coming. We even petitioned the NCAA league, all that, a while back trying to … thinking if you qualified for your conference championship game, you ought try and get or two more days recruiting, maybe even like that Sunday. I’m sure all the teams that didn’t think they were going to be in the conference championship voted it down. I think we had support from 10 teams. Then 50 didn’t agree. Imagine that.
“So yeah, it is, it’s challenging. It’s not good. It’s not good for the sport. It makes zero sense that you qualify for your championship game and you’re penalized at the most important recruiting point in the year. The positive is I think those players know why we’re not on the road as much. We’re going to be out bits and pieces this week. But hopefully they know why they’re out there and at least be watching us on Saturday, which is a good thing. We’ll deal with it. It’s kind of the way the calendar fell, but I believe this will fall like this again at some point and this is going to be something that we’re going to need to discuss. Having one week to be on the road before Signing Day is not ideal.”
Oklahoma’s biggest recruiting tool this week could be its fifth-straight Big 12 Championship before the Sooners’ coaching staff hits the recruiting trail hard next week.
Oklahoma and Baylor will kickoff the Big 12 Championship at 11 a.m. CT (TV on FOX) from AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.