How Oklahoma is flipping the recruiting game under Jim Nagy

College football is a business, so Oklahoma general manager Jim Nagy is treating it as such.

Nagy recently revealed some secrets while on "The Triple Option" podcast about how the Sooners are navigating recruiting in the midst of bidding wars for top prospects with the new age of revenue share and NIL.

"We're going to value just like we would in the National Football League. And that's where you find your value," Nagy said.

OU GM explains why Sooners prioritize value over stars in recruiting

Nagy was hired in February as the Sooners' new GM after serving as the Executive Director of the Reese's Senior Bowl since 2018. Before that, he spent 18 years inside NFL front offices as a scout with the Seattle Seahawks, Kansas City Chiefs, New England Patriots and the Washington Redskins.

When the Sooners hired Nagy, they envisioned a front office that mirrored the NFL. And he's delivered that while expanding his staff and now innovating ways to bring talent to OU with limited resources.

"What we saw this spring, which I think was a really good way to do it, is we graded the players on our new scale. And then when you get to OV season, is when you see where you can get value, right," Nagy continued. "Because I think what's gonna set the market for a lot of these players in terms of what they're being paid and what agents expect to be paid is the star system. I think five-stars want to get paid like five-stars.

"So when you get into the OV season, we might have the same grade on a five-star and a guy that's a three-star, and when you look at where they're taking their OVs to -- if they're going to Ohio State and Oregon and Texas and Texas A&M -- that's gonna be a certain market, right? But then if the same graded player is getting offers from some Group of Five schools, we know what direction we're probably gonna go, because you're looking for that value.

"If you look at National Football League rosters and dig back into their high school background, man, that league is littered with two- and three-star guys. So they're out there. Again, it's just, we need to identify those guys and trust our evaluation, so that's really, not to share too much of the trade secrets there, but that's really how we're gonna attack it."

So far, the Sooners don't have any five-star recruits committed from the 2026 class. They've let a few slip away, but after Nagy's insight, maybe OU actually let those guys walk. For instance, five-star offensive tackle Felix Ojo abruptly canceled his official visit to OU. Then, less than a month later, Ojo committed to Texas Tech for the largest revenue-share deal in college athletics history.

According to OU insider Gabe Ikard on his podcast, OU had the same grade for four-star Deacon Schmitt as Ojo. The Sooners beat out some high-profile programs to land Schmitt, and although his deal isn't public, it wasn't rich enough to make headlines. That's more money in Nagy's pocket to fill 22 eventual starting spots on the field.

So if the product is nearly the same, why not get the cheaper option? It's how the rest of us treat business and everyday life. It's stupid to overpay, so the same common sense should be used when recruiting.

Sooner Nation is frustrated with OU's lackluster 2026 recruiting class that's riddled with three-stars and outside the top 25 in most team rankings. Maybe it's because Brent Venables is on the hot heat after a 6-7 season so prospects don't want to join a cloudy future, or maybe Nagy really has found the best value.

Just recently, ESPN's NFL Draft expert, Mel Kiper, deemed Nagy, "Just a great evaluator of talent."

"But I really thought he'd be back in the NFL, so this is great," Kiper said during a radio appearance. "I think it's great for Oklahoma. It's great for Jim. Like I said, I don't think there's a better evaluator of talent out there."

There's nothing wrong with recruiting services. That's those people's jobs and they spend a lot of time scouting. However, if Sooner Nation wants to choose who to trust, Nagy has OU's best interest first and foremost. That's his job, and he's in the business of making the Oklahoma Sooners good at football.

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