Oklahoma football wide receiver Obi Obialo will close out his collegiate career in the state where it all began, with a three-year layover in West Virginia in between.
Obialo spent three seasons at Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia, before declaring in February that he would close out his collegiate career as a graduate transfer at Oklahoma.
A native of the Lone Star State, Obialo began his college football career in 2016 as a walk-on at Oklahoma State. He saw action in two games for OSU his freshman season and made two catches, but walk-ons in a wide receiver room that included names like James Washington, Jalen McCleskey, Jhajuan Seales and Dillon Stoner aren’t going to get much playing time.
Buried on the Cowboy depth chart, Obialo transferred to Marshall after his freshman season. He played in eight games his sophomore year at Marshall, catching eight passes for 238 yards and averaging 12.5 yards per catch.
His breakout season for the Thundering Herd was in 2018, when Obialo made 42 receptions for 505 yards. He suffered a foot injury in the preseason last year that limited him to just four games.
"“Just going out there (to Marshall), being from Texas, being a city boy, it was kind of just different getting used to,” Obialo said in a video press conference recently with Eric Bailey of the Tulsa World and other reporters who cover the Sooners.“I have high expectations of myself, so I just went in with my head down and just went to work,” he said."
Being from Coppell, Texas, a northwestern suburb of Dallas, Obialo knows all about Oklahoma football. And he got to see it first hand in 2016 when he was on the sidelines for Oklahoma State at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in a game won 38-20 by the Sooners.
One play in that game stood out to him in particular. “I remember Dede (Westbrook) on the sideline catching a pass (from Baker Mayfield), and he made a defender miss and took it to the house,” Obialo said.
Obialo said he had several transfer options available to him, but Oklahoma became the clear choice after an official visit.
“I just matched everything up — how close it was to home. coach (Lincoln) Riley, and all that stuff — and I just picked Oklahoma,” he said.
The Sooners are hoping his 6-foot, 3-inch frame will give Obialo a size advantage against shorter defensive backs. Length is something Oklahoma has lacked in its wide-receiver corps in recent seasons.
Obialo is one of two graduate transfers Oklahoma has brought in this season to add experience to a relatively young receiving corps. Theo Howard, a transfer from UCLA, is the other.