Oklahoma football: Transfer portal has transformed college recruiting

There’s little question that the increasingly popular transfer portal has impacted the nature and source of college recruiting, and Oklahoma football serves as a prime example.

The transfer portal can be feast or famine depending on which side you’re on, and this offseason the Sooners have experienced both sides in record numbers.

Oklahoma has picked up seven new faces via the portal, but six players of some note and 10 others have left the program this offseason by way of the portal.

Instead of focusing solely on the high school ranks and the junior-college level in working on the next couple of recruiting cycles, head coaches and their staffs are also having to pay close attention to the talent and position needs that can be filled through available transfers. And over the past year the numbers entering the transfer portal has increased many times over.

The size of the Sooners’ 2021 recruiting class, most all of whom are already with the team, is just 16, including three five-star prospects and eight four-stars. Fifteen are high-school recruits and one (Isaiah Coe) is from the junior-college ranks.

When you factor in the seven who have transferred in, however, the size of the 2021 talent infusion grows to 23, which is more representative of  a normal-size OU recruiting class.

Similarly, Oklahoma has just nine commitments currently for its 2022 class, although that number is expected to jump up over the next couple of months. It is reasonable to expect, though, that a few more OU transfers will come and go through the portal leading into the 2023 campaign.

One place the portal was not part of the discussion was at the ChampU BBQ a week ago. The Sooners added one highly recruited four-star 2022 commitment during the BBQ weekend (RB Gavin Sawchuk), and apparently the OU staff and overall festivities made quite an impression on a number of the prospective recruits who were in attendance.

Among the influencers who were there to m, ingle and enjoy the weekend along with the invited recruits were former OU stars such as Adrian Peterson, Baker Mayfield, Kyler Murray and even Jalen Hurts, as well as a number of the players who are already committed to the Sooners’ 2022 class.

Here are a few of the top Oklahoma targets who attended the ChampU BBQ and had very favorable things to say about the weekend and the visit to OU. Time will tell whether they will end up as Sooners, but it won’t be without a full-out effort on the part of Lincoln Riley, his coaches and some former blue-chip recruits who found their way to the NFL through the high visibility of playing at Oklahoma.

Among the 2022 prospects the Sooners have high on their radar and left with good feelings about the fit at OU are  four-star edge rusher Kenyatta Jackson, Jr. from Hollywood, Florida. If that town sounds familiar, it’s because that is where former OU wide receiver Marquise “Hollywood” Brown is from, hence the acquired nickname. Brown also happened to be present during the ChampU weekend.

Also among the 2022 recruits was offensive tackle Jake Taylor, rated No. 28 at that position in the 2022 class by 247Sports, along with Bishop Gorman (Las Vegas) High School teammate Zion Branch, the No. 49 safety prospect. Zion’s younger brother, Zachariah, a 2023 wide-receiver prospect, also was at the ChampU BBQ. Bishop Gorman is the high school that former Sooner RB and now running backs coach at OU, attended.

Taylor reportedly has Oklahoma, Alabama and Notre Dame as the three schools he is considering. He called the OU visit as the best he’s experienced, according to Jason Kersey, who covers the Oklahoma beat for The Athletic.

There were a number of 2023 prospects who were in attendance as well, most notably the No. 2 quarterback prospect in the class, Malachi Nelson, out of Los Alamitos, California, who Oklahoma has been heavily recruiting and is expected to make his decision in July.

Word is that five-star wide-receiver prospect Brandon Inniss, from Plantation, Florida, already had Oklahoma high on his list, but his impression could have gone even higher after the ChampU weekend. It certainly didn’t hurt that QB prospect Nelson was also attending the event.

Cayden Green, a 2023 offensive tackle prospect from Lee’s Summit, Mo. is also worth keeping a watch on. He told Adam Gorney, Rivals.com national recruiting director, he loved the facilities at Oklahoma, the atmosphere, the feeling that it was a winning program and the message from the coaching staff that everything is earned, but if you put in the work championships could be won in Norman.

Any or all of these prospects could end up as Oklahoma commitments in the months ahead, and these are just the recruits who visited the OU campus June 18-19. July and August should be active months for recruiting announcements. We’ll be closely following all of it.