Sooner OT Orlando Brown Looks at Tennessee Unlike Other Sooners
By Chip Rouse
Oklahoma offensive lineman Orlando Brown has a different feeling about going to Knoxville to play Tennessee this weekend than any other Sooner player.
The redshirt-freshman will line up at starting left tackle when the OU offense takes the field Saturday night before 105,000 jam-packed fans at massive Neyland Stadium. Had things gone a little differently 18 months ago, however, chances are good Brown would have been wearing the orange jersey of the Tennessee Volunteers and battling to keep the Sooners’ Eric Striker and Charles Tapper out of the Vols backfield.
You see, Brown had originally committed to Tennessee back in the spring of 2013, and was still planning to sign with the Volunteers right up until a week before National Signing Day in February 2014. He took his official recruiting visit to Knoxville the weekend before National Signing Day, but was shocked to learn that weekend from Tennessee head coach Butch Jones that the Volunteers wouldn’t have room for him in their 2014 recruiting class after all.
Nov 22, 2014; Norman, OK, USA; Oklahoma Sooners offensive tackle Orlando Brown (78) during the game against the Kansas Jayhawks at Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
According to OU beat writer Ryan Aber, in an article in the Oklahoma City Oklahoman, Brown had not made a recruiting visit to Oklahoma, but the 6-7 340-pound offensive lineman had listed the Sooners and Arkansas as two other schools he had interest in at the time he committed to Tennessee.
“Orlando and I had a really good relationship as a junior and, before he committed, we would talk fairly frequently,” OU head coach Bob Stoops told Aber. “And then he ended up committing to Tennessee so that kind of stopped for a while, and then he called me up there late in recruiting and said, ‘Coach, I’ve reconsidered what I want to do.'”
Stoops didn’t have any problem finding room for the 46th-rated offensive tackle, according to Rivals, in the 2014 national recruiting class. So Tennessee’s loss became Oklahoma’s gain, which makes for a very intriguing story line in Saturday’s Big 12-SEC showdown between the visiting 19th-ranked Sooners and the Volunteers.
Brown indicated to the Oklahoman’s Aber that he didn’t have any vengeful feelings about Saturday’s game, saying that for him it is more about performing in the present than holding on to any revenge from the past.
Brown, the son of former NFL player Orlando “Zeus” Brown, who also played tackle in a 10-year professional career with the Cleveland Browns and the Baltimore Ravens, has been to Neyland Stadium twice before (at the Tennessee spring game in 2013 and again in the 2013 regular season), both times as a spectator.
On Saturday night, he will take the field as a player, only wearing the crimson and cream of Oklahoma instead of the orange and white of the side he thought he was going to be on when he made his previous visits there.