Oklahoma football: What's With All the Recruiting Decommitments?

The Oklahoma football 2017 recruiting class was the best in a decade, according to ESPN, and rated a top-10 class pretty much from wire to wire.

That momentum, coupled with a second consecutive Big 12 championship and an appearance in the second year of the College Football Playoff in 2015, appeared to be carrying over into the Oklahoma recruiting efforts for 2018 and even 2019.

Then, over a three-day period in late April, three different Sooner recruits announced that they had changed their minds and were decommitting from Oklahoma.

Cameron Rising, a four-star quarterback prospect from Newbury Park, Calif. (near Los Angeles) had been verbally committed to the Sooners for 2018 since last August. His decommitment from the Sooners’ 2018 recruiting class was one blow. What hurt more, however, was that he backed out of the Oklahoma offer, electing instead to switch his commitment to Texas, Oklahoma biggest rival, and new head coach Tom Herman.

Rising’s decommitment was the first of three in as many days. A pair of 2019 wide receivers followed Rising in asking out of their verbal commitments to become future Oklahoma Sooners.

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Arjei Henderson and Theo Wease, both from the state of Texas, are the other two Sooner commitments who have elected to go elsewhere. Their decommitments leave Bob Stoops and the Sooners with a bare cupboard as far as commitments for the 2019 class.

Where Henderson and Wease will ultimately end up is anybody’s guess. In addition to Oklahoma, Wease was also considering offers from LSU, Georgia, Miami (Fla.), Oregon and Texas.

Henderson reported that after he had verbally committed to OU, he received a flood of counter offers from other interested schools, which caused him to rethink where he really wanted to be and what would be best for him.

It’s never good news to lose a verbal commitment, but the way the recruiting system is set up, it’s actually a little surprising it doesn’t happen more often than it does. Some of these prospects are recruited hard two to even three years before they graduate from high school. They are permitted to make a verbal commitment to an offer, but that is not binding and does not become so until they sign a letter of intent on National Signing Day (typically the first Wednesday in February of their high school senior year).

In the case of Rising, who is still a high school junior and will not graduate until 2018, he probably surmised that when he got to OU in the fall of 2018, Kyler Murray would be the likely starting quarterback and would have two years of eligibility remaining. The Sooners would also have Austin Kendall, who will be a junior in 2018, and Chris Robison, who will be a true sophomore and may even be redshirted for the 2017 season, on the depth chart at quarterback.

As promising a prospect as Rising might be, he probably thought his chances of getting on the field would be better at some place other than Oklahoma. It’s just a sharp slap in the face that he chose to leave OU in favor of Texas, with whom the Sooners will have a good chance of seeing him again down the road.

Henderson and Wease appear to be classic examples of what happens when you get wowed and wanted by a major college program way too early in the process and jump at an attractive offer before more equally appealing opportunities have had time to play out.

Wease acknowledged as much in a Twitter message that was cited in the Oklahoma City Oklahoman and other media outlets:

"“Oklahoma has a great program and will remain in my top schools, however I made a lifetime decision too early and I need more time to think about what’s best for both myself and family.”"

Just because a recruit has made a verbal commitment to one institution doesn’t mean that other suitors stop selling and trying to persuade that same recruit to change allegiance and go with them instead.

And the more time there is between the verbal commitment and the formal signing deadline, the greater the chance that a recruit will yield to extenuating circumstances, second guess his original decision and feel compelled to make a different choice.

Oklahoma currently ranks 21st, according to Rivals.com, in the 2018 team recruiting rankings. The Sooners have six verbal commitments (three defensive backs, a defensive tackle, a running back, and an offensive lineman) thus far.

Four Big 12 schools rank above the Sooners in the current Rivals 2018 rankings: 15. Oklahoma State, 17. Baylor, 19. Texas and 20. Kansas.

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Oklahoma Football: What’s With All the Recruiting Decommitments?

By Chip Rouse | May 8, 2017

The Oklahoma football 2017 recruiting class was the best in a decade, according to ESPN, and rated a top-10 class pretty much from wire to wire.