Oklahoma football: Way-too-early look at Sooners’ 2023 recruiting
By Chip Rouse
The recruiting cycle in college football never really ends. As soon as Brent Venables signed on 21 newcomers in the 2022 Oklahoma football class, the focus shifted over to future prospects in the next couple of cycles.
The transfer portal has changed recruiting for every college program. In addition to the 21-member 2022 OU recruiting class, the Sooners added on 10 players acquired through the transfer portal.
Work on the 2022 recruiting class — which after the sudden departure of former head coach Lincoln Riley took a big hit but somewhat remarkably, thanks to the serious efforts of former Sooner head coach Bob Stoops and with new head coach Brent Venables hitting the ground running, recovered to become the 10th-best class nationally — is now finished, with nearly half of those newcomers already on campus and participating in spring practice.
The Sooners’ 2022 recruiting class, however, wasn’t the only Oklahoma class that was negatively impacted by the OU coaching change. Once ranked as No. 1 by both 247Sports and Rivals, the 2023 class lost three of its five commitments in the weeks following the announcement that Riley was headed to USC.
Among the decommitments from the Oklahoma 2023 class were a pair of five-star prospects: No. 1 quarterback recruit Malachi Nelson and his high school teammate WR Machai Lemon. Both prospects have now committed to join Riley at USC.
Another Los Alamitos, California, teammate of Nelson and Lemon, four-star WR DeAndre Moore, also decommitted from the Sooners but has not yet committed.
Oklahoma currently has four commitments for 2023, and despite the fallout of some elite prospects because of the coaching change, the Sooners’ 2023 class still ranks in the top 10 at No. 10, according to ESPN. The Sooners’ three commitments include four-star QB Jackson Arnold, the No. 6 quarterback in the class; Ashton Cozart, a four-star WR; Joshua Bates, a three-star LB prospect, and three-star athlete Erik McCarty.
It’s both ironic and a little irritating, frankly, to see USC ranked just ahead of the Sooners, in the No, 9 spot in the current ESPN recruiting class rankings for 2023, especially with two former Oklahoma commits.
The good news, however, is it is still very early in the 2023 recruiting cycle, and Venables and his OU staff are getting their fair share of interest from quite a few elite prospects. Several national recruiting services are projecting that the Sooners will win the commitment of four-star OL Cayden Green out of the Kansas City area.
Oklahoma is also on the list of considerations for five-star LB Anthony Hill, five-star DL David Hicks and five-star safety Caleb Downs among others.
It will be an interesting next eight months, leading up to the first of the two national signing days in early December, as Oklahoma and the other major schools compete for the best talent in the 2023 class