Oklahoma football: Sooners’ 2021 signing class sits tall in Big 12

By national college recruiting standards, the 2021 Oklahoma football class would be considered very good but not great.

That’s not to say this class couldn’t be among the best in the two decades of the Bob Stoops/Lincoln Riley era. But as the talent pool continues to grow and the players coming out of high school and the junior-college ranks are bigger, stronger and faster than they’ve ever been. it’s generally the same few schools — the likes of Alabama, Ohio State, Clemson, Georgia and even Texas — that tend to get the cream of the crop every year in the highly competitive world of college football recruiting.

Oklahoma has had its share of recruiting success, although the Sooners have not had a class in the last decade that ranked higher than No. 5 in the country. The difference at Oklahoma, compared with, say, Texas, which regularly is able to bring in top recruiting classes but over the past decade or so hasn’t been able to translate that into sustained success on the field, is that the OU coaching staff has proven to be more successful in developing the players they recruit.

That’s why OU has been able to win six consecutive Big 12 championships and seven in the last 10 years. Over that same span, the Sooners have made four College Football Playoff appearances and been to three other New Year’s Six bowls.

Texas, on the other hand, which has a long history of bringing in a higher-ranked recruiting class than OU, has won no conference titles in the last decade and been to just one New Years Six postseason bowl game during that time.

Depending on which national recruiting service you follow, the Sooners’ 2021 class ranks 11th (247Sports), 13th (Rivals) and 15th (ESPN), but still well within the top 15 nationally.

In the past decade (2012-21), the Oklahoma recruiting classes have averaged a No. 12 ranking across all three national services. And if you break that down further, to the last five years, OU’s average class ranking is 9.5.

The 2021 Sooner class may not have cracked the top-10 in this unprecedented and difficult recruiting year amid a COVID-19 pandemic, but it is rated the best class in the Big 12, having bested the Longhorns for the first time in the last four years and just the fourth time in the last 10.

The Top-10 recruiting classes nationally are always going to be the ones that get ballyhooed the most, but where you stand recruiting-wise in your conference probably has the most meaning because those are the teams you are competing against for league championships. The team with the best players is generally the one that comes out at or near the top of the standings every season, and that starts with recruiting.

Here are the top five 2021 Big 12 recruiting classes based on an average of the ESPN, Rivals and 247Sports class rankings:

13. Oklahoma Sooners

15. Texas Longhorns

39. Oklahoma State Cowboys

41. West Virginia

43. Baylor Bears

Surprisingly, if this class ranking was expanded to the top six teams, the Kansas Jayhawks would be sixth with an average rank of 46th.