| 15 March 2010
Bleacher Report recently is posting a series of speculative articles about programs that will struggle in the future. Now TaW let the article about the top 15 programs that will dominate future recruiting pass by without comment, even though the article didn't mention OU. However, now Bleacher Report has decided that OU will be a program that will struggle to recruit in the future. The argument is laughable at best.
Listing OU here is not just speculative but shows how writer Bryan Kelly has done no homework whatsoever. OU consistently over at least the last 25 years has recruited regionally/nationally and had many great players from in state. No matter how much evidence is presented, the myth that OU is totally reliant upon Texas players won't go away. OU has always had great players from Texas and will continue to recruit well in Texas. Under Bob, OU has always made their living on recruiting top Texas talent, and those players have not always been the Top 10 in Texas five star kids (Derrick Strait, Jimmy Wilkerson, Jonathan Jackson, Jeremy Beal, Clint Ingram, Trent Williams, Adrian Taylor, Travis Lewis, Brandon Everage). A small amount of research would show that OU while recruiting heavily in Texas, also gets their top players from other locations.
2010 Top Ten Recruits- A class ranked in the top 5 nationally by just about every service that exists.
- Blake Bell - KS
- Brennan Clay - CA
- Justin McCay- KS
- Tony Jefferson - CA
- Kenny Stills- CA
- Corey Nelson- TX
- Austin Haywood - OK
- Bronson Irwin- OK
- James Haynes - TX
- Eric Humphrey - TX
So that was recruiting how about the actual best players on the roster? 2009 Team Top Ten Players -
- Sam Bradford- OK
- Jermaine Gresham- OK
- Gerald McCoy- OK
- Jeremy Beal- TX
- Travis Lewis- TX
- Demarco Murray- NV
- Trent Williams- TX
- Dominique Franks- OK
- Quinton Carter- NV
- Ryan Broyles- OK
Let's check in ten years ago just as OU was regaining national respect and making their run for a national title. 2000 Team Top Players
- Josh Heupel- SD
- The real Roy Williams- CA
- Rocky Calmus- OK
- Derrick Strait- TX
- Torrance Marshall- FL
- Michael Thompson- OK
- Antwone Savage - GA
- Quentin Griffin - TX
- Trent Smith - OK
- Brandon Everage- TX
Okay skipping the nineties because I'm not sure I find an OU team with 10 top players. Here's the best team from the 80s, surely this will be Texas dominated due to UT's Fred Akers era. 1985 Team Top Ten Players
- Jamelle Holieway- CA
- Lydell Carr- OK
- Brian Bosworth - TX
- Kevin Murphy- TX
- Tony Casillas- OK
- Keith Jackson- ARK
- Mark Hutson - ARK
- Anthony Phillips- OK
- Darrell Reed - TX
- Ricky Dixon- TX
And to go way back into the college football time machine back to the days of 120+ scholarships and no real recruiting rules in terms of contacts/visits, just a few years removed from the days of all white Longhorn teams, and when Barry Switzer would later out-recruit Texas so bad that Darrol Royal quit college football. 1975 Team Top Ten Players (and this was a matter of much debate among the Sooner fans I asked)
- Lee Roy Selmon - OK (generally recognized as the best player in Sooner history)
- Dewey Selmon- OK
- Steve Davis- OK
- Joe Washington - TX
- Darryl Hunt - TX
- Jimbo Elrod - OK
- Elvis Peacock- FL
- Mike Vaughn - OK
- Tinker Owens - OK
- Jerry Anderson- TN
