Caleb Williams Says Family Will Move to Oklahoma, Sooner Summit On Tap This Week
Earlier in the morning, SI Sooners learned that 5-star offensive tackle Tristan Leigh would visit Norman later this week.
But as it turns out, he won't be alone.
The much-ballyhooed Sooner Summit will take place this week, as Leigh and Caleb Williams headline a coalition of top 2021 prospects who will journey to Oklahoma to scope out the university, Norman and Oklahoma City. Williams, who committed to OU on July 4, laid out the details of Sooner Summit for SI All-American in his 'All on the Line' blog.
"How Sooner Summit came about was that I was preparing to go down to Oklahoma to visit Norman and for my family and I to look at houses there," Williams said. "We are putting down roots, so to speak. At first it was just gonna be us, and I floated the idea by my dad about inviting the recruits and the commits to come and join us."
A quick triangulation of reports makes it easy to peg Leigh as one of the prospects that Williams invited to Sooner Summit. Williams himself didn't mention any names, but indicated that he and his family organized Sooner Summit without the aid of the Oklahoma staff. It's informal, organic, and designed to bring the participants closer together.
"There’s not gonna be coaches and things like that because it's an NCAA dead period," Williams noted. "They can’t talk to us. They can’t be around us. They can’t really help us with anything like that. This is all us recruits coming together under a common agenda.
"We’ve got a bunch of good recruits coming in, a bunch of good guys overall coming," he continued. "Good families. I’ll be honest, I can’t wait to meet some of the people that I haven’t met. Most of these recruits I haven’t met. Most of these families I haven’t met."
Williams said that his mother will head to Norman on Tuesday to begin looking at houses and apartments in preparation for their move to Oklahoma. He called his college decision a "family thing," and emphasized that his parents want to be able to watch him play football as much as possible.
However, Williams is also excited to build a family of future teammates.
"We'll have some pictures through the week," Williams continued. "Dinner with everybody Saturday night, there's gonna be some pretty epic pictures that night. It's been a lot of parents getting together on the phone talking, everybody's excited to come, so it's kind of a cool thing. Because you don't want to send your kids to a place you've never seen before."
Williams says that he wants Sooner Summit to feel "very laid back and flexible," and provide a change of pace from the cut-and-dried recruiting visit to which many prospects are accustomed.
"I’m not a coach," Williams said. "I’m an 18-year-old kid, and I know what the kids go through because I'm going through it. I’m their age. So this isn’t gonna be some unofficial or official with coaches and the recruiters and analysts and all these people around us. It’s gonna be Caleb and his family being around the other guys and their families and having a good time, and that’s about it."
Williams was very explicit in expressing his goals for Sooner Summit, as he said he hopes it will lead several uncommitted recruits to choose Oklahoma. Leigh is one of the nation's top uncommitted prospects, but Williams said there will be multiple players on the visit that haven't chosen a school yet.
"That’s really the ultimate goal, because you want to have a really good class," Williams remarked. "The better the class is, the better the opportunity that we’ll have to go win a national championship, and obviously that’s the goal. The goal is to get to college and have a good career and go to the next level. I mean, I want to win championships. I want to get guys around me in my class that want to do the same.
"Hopefully that’s what this Sooner Summit does, it helps the guys understand the mentality that we all have, and to build the brotherhood. ... So hopefully this helps them see the dream and helps them understand what we’re trying to do at OU for these next couple years."
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