During the 2025 college football season, the Oklahoma Sooners already had a dwindled 10 wide receivers on their roster that started their careers at OU right out of high school. Less than a week of the Transfer Portal being open, that number is down to five, and none of the original scholarship players have been in Norman for longer than a year.
Zion Ragins' portal entry on Wednesday created the Sooners' eighth loss at receiver so far this cycle. They lost six receivers to the portal last year, proving this is not just a fluke in Oklahoma, but a disturbing trend.
Sooners surpass last year's concerning number of Transfer Portal losses at wide receiver
Of the Sooners' eight receiver losses so far this cycle, six signed with OU out of high school and two transferred in just last year, including Javonnie Gibson and Josiah Martin. The former preps additions turned losses included Ragins, Jayden Gibson, Jakeb Snyder, KJ Daniels, Zion Kearney and Ivan Carreon.
Ragins, Daniels, Kearney and Carreon made up the Sooners' 2024 signing class of scholarship receivers, meaning the entire group is gone less than two years after arriving on campus. Jacob Jordan is still expected to return, but he got to OU as a walk-on in 2024 before breaking out as a freshman. It was a class that was forced to step up early as freshmen because of injuries, but then they all experienced a decrease in production this season before leaving.
In fact, the only class left with original scholarship receivers still around is the most recent 2025 group that included only Elijah Thomas and Manny Choice. Choice didn't catch a pass this season, while Thomas primarily played special teams and brought in just one five-yard pass despite a preseason of hype.
Thomas, Choice and Jordan join former walk-ons Trey Brown and Eli Merck as the only returning receivers from 2025 who originally joined the Sooners out of high school. Only Thomas and Choice actually got scholarship offers from OU in high school.
This trend means that since Emmett Jones took over as OU's wide receivers coach in 2023, none of his high school recruits have made it past Year 2. When the Sooners do suffer these blows, they never seem detrimental at the time, but that's only because it's too early to ever really know what OU had in that player. Every OU wide receiver that caught more than two passes in 2025 was a transfer, meaning no player the Sooners recruited out of high school three years into Jones' tenure had more than two receptions all season.
Now, only time will tell if Ragins, Daniels, Kearney and Carreon, who were all four-star recruits according to at least one major recruiting service, will be haunting losses. The clock also seems to be ticking on Thomas and Choice's time wearing crimson and cream. And if none of these former high school signees ever end up being a loss worth regretting, well, that's clearly a problem, too.