Oklahoma football has a starting quarterback and it comes at the exact right time.
Lincoln Riley told the media that Jalen Hurts hadn’t earned the Oklahoma football starting job yet for the last seven months and the media didn’t believe him.
They didn’t believe him after the announcement, when a former national champion quarterback, SEC Offensive Player of the Year and the first freshman to start under center at Alabama in 30 years announced he was transferring, but Riley insisted the job was still open.
They didn’t believe him when Hurts stood out among the quarterbacks with a solid debut in the Sooners spring game, but Riley insisted that the job was still open.
They didn’t believe him at Big 12 Media Day when at least half the questions the Sooner players and coaches fielded concerned Jalen Hurts, who was conspicuous by his absence, but Riley insisted the job was still open.
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Finally, on Monday with a short release from the university and one tweet, it became official that Jalen Hurts was the scheduled starter for the Sooners heading into their season opener at Houston. The media reacted with all the anticlimactic lack of shock Game of Thrones fans had when they discovered Jon Snow’s parentage.
So was the media right? Was Hurts the guy all along or did this competition really go until the final Sooner scrimmage.
The answer is probably somewhere in the middle of the two.
Yes, it was likely going to take either an injury to Hurts or a near supernatural effort from either Tanner Mordecai or Spencer Rattler to put Jalen Hurts on the bench for the season opener against Houston. The Sooners didn’t a graduate transfer senior with 28 starts to be a backup, especially not a name like Jalen Hurts.