Will Oklahoma's national recruiting efforts be undone by homesickness/playing time?
Published: 1/31/2012 9:42 PM
Last Modified: 1/31/2012 9:42 PM
It’s here.
Love it or hate it, National Signing Day is upon us.
In Wednesday’s Tulsa World, I’ve compiled a report — in industry jargon, we call it an “advance” — on how Oklahoma’s recruiting efforts in Texas have all but tapered off in 2012, and how the Sooners are recruiting far more nationally this year than they ever have under Bob Stoops.
Frankly, what I know about recruiting could probably fill Bob Stoops’ coffee cup.
(An aside: years ago the World assigned one person, Jimmie Tramel at the time, to cover all the recruiting news for OU, OSU, TU, Arkansas and the state high schools. That lasted a couple months and ended when Jimmie turned in his phone bill. We tried to pay a regional service to cover recruiting, but quality and deadline became problematic. So the last decade or so, we’ve enlisted the writers who cover the football beats to aggregate what relevant recruiting news they can. That’s usually amounted to a short note on verbal commitments when they happen, and between the end of college football and National Signing Day that swells to a weekly player profile, a list of commitments, some notebook items and sometimes a story on recruiting trends. It’s nowhere near enough for the rabid recruitniks out there, but it probably suffices for most newspaper subscribers.)
Anyway, I think tomorrow’s piece is a pretty comprehensive look at why the Sooners have only six Texans among their expected 25 verbal commitments, easily the lowest in the Stoops era.
But as usual, the story ran too long and I had to leave some good stuff out.
Herewith, then, is a primer, a preview, just a tidbit to help satiate that recruiting hunger you know you have deep down.
Since my own knowledge of football’s second season is so limited, I enlisted the help of three guys who know the game and whose work I respect, Josh McCuistion of SoonerScoop.com (that’s the Rivals.com site that covers OU), Bob Przybylo of ESPN RecruitingNation (he covers OU recruiting for SoonerNation) and Ahmard Vital (he covers Texas high school recruiting news for Scout.com.
One topic that doesn’t make tomorrow’s paper is whether or not the Sooners’ new national recruiting focus is actually a good idea.
Look at the attrition in 2011, for instance. In the 12 months between the Fiesta Bowl and the Insight Bowl, a total of 16 players prematurely left the team. That’s an obscenely huge number — almost the virtual equivalent of an entire recruiting class, wiped out. (Last year, recall, OU brought in 15 newcomers.)
You’ve heard that attrition happens everywhere, that this is just standard operating procedure, that Bob Stoops put his foot down and stamped out some of the bad apples, nothing to see here, move along.
But don’t buy it. Sixteen departures in one calendar year is an enormous amount.
So, given that mass exodus, I asked my panel of recruiting experts if OU’s newfound national scope was something to be concerned with.
Many of the 16 left simply because they weren’t getting playing time. Nine of those 16 were from Texas and still claimed homesickness.
Was that, then, a harbinger? Will more than a few of this year’s class, which stretches across four time zones and 10 states, suddenly become homesick for sunny Florida or California, or for working class Ohio or Illinois, if they weren’t good enough to play right away? Nothing quickens the onset of homesickness more than sitting around and not participating.
“That’s something that could definitely happen,” Przybylo said. “Because you get told all the right things. You could be coming in, putting in all the work, but it just might be that you’re not good enough to make the field. For a lot of kids, obviously, that’s tough to accept and they start looking elsewhere. I think we definitely saw that with this year’s (team) and a lot of kids that basically were told, ‘Hey, if you want to play Division I, it’s not gonna be here; or if you want to play here at OU, it’s not at the position that you initially thought.’ ”
McCuistion noted that the tight end position, in particular, could be troublesome. The Sooners’ offense seldom uses more than one, and often it’s zero. A second tight end is most frequently used as a blocker in short-yardage running situations. And there are as many as six players in this class who could project to play wide receiver, an obvious hint that OU actually could be passing more in the future.
OU will sign four tight ends tomorrow, and it’s likely only two will play regularly in 2012 and 2013.
“And all of the (tight ends) are from non-traditional areas for Oklahoma: Ohio, Florida, California along with the kid from Kansas,” McCuistion said. “To me, that’s a concern, because those guys obviously chose to go there because of playing time.”
McCuistion, however, thinks players today are more conditioned to being away from home.
“Five of these (newcomers), they’re (junior college) guys,” he said. “They’ve already been away from home. So some of that being away from home and being worried about a guy getting homesick, they’ve been away from home. I don’t think that’s gonna be an issue. But (for) some of these guys, it’s a valid concern.
“I think so often ‘homesick’ becomes the crutch for some of this stuff,” he added. “These kids just want to play. That’s why Oklahoma has had huge success at (recruiting) receiver this year. It’s not because Jay Norvell suddenly became a better coach or a better recruiter. He’s got playing time to sell, and that’s what these kids are dying for, especially at the skill positions.”
I asked if Texas and Texas A&M and Baylor and Tech and SMU and TCU and whoever else was doing a better job keeping Texas talent at home this year.
“I don’t think any of those schools have done any better,” Vital said. “Because Texas has gotten the players they’ve wanted for quite some time. A&M has done some things locally, but they’ve also gotten some kids from outside the borders as well. I just think Oklahoma has done a lot of things nationally, and sometimes when they’ve found the players they want, it may not be within the Texas borders.”
The Sooners on Wednesday will sign six players with East Coast roots, two with West Coast roots (and two others who attended junior college there), and four from the Midwest.
“It’s gonna be interesting to see how things progress,” Przybylo said. “Because so far, all the Florida kids sound fired up. But what will happen after a year of sitting around and being so, so far away from family? It’s definitely something to watch here.”
— John E. Hoover
Written by
John E. Hoover
Sports Columnist
