Judging by where the Oklahoma football recruiting effort has been at this time the past few years, it appears that Bob Stoops and his OU coaching staff are reaping the benefits that come with being a College Football Playoff team.
The Sooners, who regularly were ranked among the top 10 schools in football recruiting in the first decade of Stoops’ current 17-year reign at Oklahoma, have drifted back some the last five years in terms of reeling in top-ranked talent.
The last Oklahoma recruiting class that ranked in the top 10 nationally was in 2010. The Sooners pulled in the fifth-best class that year, according to ESPN’s Football Recruiting Rankings. To refresh the memory of Sooner fans, the Oklahoma Class of 2010 included the likes of offensive standouts Brennan Clay, Kenny Stills and Blake Bell and defensive players Geneo Grissom, Tony Jefferson and Aaron Colvin, just to name a few.
It isn’t that the Sooners have dropped off the map the last five years insofar as comparing the Oklahoma recruiting classes with other elite college programs, but for a school that was a fixture in landing top-10 recruiting classes throughout the 2000s to be outside of that select grouping for five consecutive years has not gone unnoticed by critics of Bob Stoops and the Sooners who contend the program has grown complacent.
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The past couple of years in particular the Oklahoma football recruiting effort has gotten off the a notoriously slow start. In fact, a year ago, in the spring of 2015, the various services that track and measure the teams and their recruiting classes had the Sooners well back in the rankings – in the low 30s – something that was highly uncharacteristic of am Oklahoma team under Stoops.
Whatever the reason for the Sooners’ slow starts and perceived decline in recruiting efforts in recent seasons, that is clearly not the case this year. It is no coincidence that Oklahoma’s presence in the College Football Playoff last season has had a direct effect on the OU recruiting effort for 2017.
The Sooners’ 2017 class has been ranked in the top five all season, and for a couple of months early this year, both Rivals.com and Scout.com had OU at No. 2 behind Ohio State. ESPN currently ranks the Sooners No. 4 in the 2017 Class Rankings (Rivals and Scout have Oklahoma at No. 3).
Bob Stoops is obviously pleased with what he sees so far. The OU head coach sent out this tweet this week: “From Carolina to Hill Country #SoonerSquad17 is filling up – get in while you can.”
Oklahoma has 15 verbal commitments so far (eight on offense, six on defense and a punter on special teams), which is tied with Miami (Fla.) and Mississippi State for the most of any school in the country. Moreover, 10 of the Sooner commitments are rated as four stars, equal to that of both Alabama and Ohio State.
There is still a half a year to go before the book will be officially closed on the football Class of 2017, but with a strong start and tailwind at the Sooners’ sails, it is hard to imagine that this group won’t get even stronger as the recruiting effort for 2017 progresses toward the finish line.