Oklahoma football: OU baseball isn’t only one watching MLB Draft closely

Two-sport Oklahoma student athlete Kyler Murray is in line to become the Oklahoma football starting quarterback this fall…or not.

On Monday through Wednesday this coming week, Major League Baseball will hold its annual amateur draft, and Murray is expected to have his name called out in one of the early rounds by one of the 30 MLB teams. It will be his first bridge to an opportunity in professional sports.

ESPN has Murray ranked as the 38th best player available in the upcoming draft. I’ve seen where other scouts have him at the back end of the top 100. That range places the two-sport OU star’s selection probability somewhere in the second or third round.

A low first or high second-round selection could earn Murray a signing contract of a couple million dollars. The question is: Would that be enticing enough for him to take his shot now at a professional career in baseball?

Murray’s baseball career at Oklahoma got off to a less than illustrious beginning. He played in just 27 games in the 2017 season, batting .122 with no home runs and only six RBI. He has turned that around dramatically this season, hitting .296 with 10 home runs, 47 RBI and a .556 slugging percentage.

To be clear, Murray could sign a professional baseball contract and still be eligible to play football for Oklahoma in the fall. I’m not sure, though, that Bob Stoops or current head coach Lincoln Riley had that idea in mind when they allowed Murray to participate in both football and baseball as a condition for his transfer to OU in 2015.

I can’t fathom a professional baseball organization agreeing to allow Murray to play both baseball and college football. The risk for injury seems too high.

In speaking last month with reporters who cover Oklahoma baseball, head coach Skip Johnson outlined a possible scenario regarding Murray’s career track.

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He (Murray) could be selected in the first or second round, possibly work out a deal to defer his starting date until after the first of the year, which would allow him to play football in the fall of 2018. He could then elect to opt out of his final year of football eligibility.

That would be one possibility. A more realistic scenario would be for Murray to not sign to play baseball this year, with the belief that he could even potentially improve his draft position a year from now, and play football for OU in the fall. That path, of course, has risks associated with it, not the least of which would be suffering a football injury that could derail both careers.

There, of course, is a third option that no Sooner fan wants to contemplate: Murray could choose to go play baseball and forgo football all together.

Murray has seen only limited action at quarterback so far in his Oklahoma football career. He was a five-star recruit coming out of high school (in Allen, Texas) and the Gatorade National Player of the Year.

The expectations are high for Murray, and most everyone believes he will be the OU starting quarterback in 2018, but Riley insists that it is a close battle for job between Murray and sophomore Austin Kendall.

Despite all the talk and speculation, Riley appears convinced that Murray will be playing football at Oklahoma in the fall. At least that is the party line he is espousing publicly.

Just this past week, the Sooner head coach said, on a Sooner Caravan stop in Tulsa, that he didn’t expect any surprises following next week’s MLB Draft.

“Everybody else has been a lot more worried about it than me,” Riley told Chuck Carlton of the Dallas Morning News.

"“When he (Murray) first decided to leave (Texas) A&M, we had very candid conversations with him and his family about it (playing football and baseball at OU),” Riley said. “They have lived up to their word — every part of it. I have no doubt they’ll continue to do so.”"

Stay tuned. I have a feeling this is one of those stories that doesn’t just fade away into the sunset.

Kyler Murray is going to have a huge decision to make, and you can bet he is going to have a lot of people in his ear pushing and pulling his decision process.