Obi Obialo Overcame Numerous Hurdles to Get to Oklahoma but Says 'I'm Happy to Be Here'

Injured in high school, he says his scholarship offers were rescinded before walking on at Oklahoma State and transferring to Marshall

Obi Obialo sees a bright future ahead, one in which he is an inside receiver in the Oklahoma offense, seeking physical mismatches with his 6-foot-3, 218-pound frame and inciting whatever Sooner crowd is allowed into the stadium.

Obi Obialo / Photo: OU Athletics

That’s certainly preferable to his recent past, when he endured a hand injury in his first year at Marshall University, then was lost with a foot injury in his final season with the Thundering Herd, then transferred to OU and then, after the pandemic hit, spent parts of the offseason training with his little sisters.

“At first there were no gyms open, so it was just me and my two little sisters,” Obialo said this week on a video press conference. “We were going to the high school and just running the hills, things like that. I was pretty much doing whatever I could to just stay (in) shape and all that.”

One of his sisters is a freshman at the University of Houston. The other is a junior in high school. They’re athletic enough, and sure, everyone worked hard.

But the real work came later.

“For me, it wasn’t too difficult because there’s a lot of people from my area (Dallas) on the team, quarterbacks and stuff like that,” he said. “So we had gotten together in the Dallas area and we were throwing three times a week. So that kind of helped me get up to speed with the plays, the people, and just getting to know the system and stuff like that.”

For Obialo, a senior from the DFW suburb of Coppell, he’s hoping to stay healthy, and he’s hoping that a fresh start will make for a strong finish — beginning with Saturday's season opener against Missouri State.

As a high school player, he was an emerging stud — 40 catches for 598 yards and seven touchdowns as a junior — before he suffered a dislocated ankle.

As a high school recruit, he had some good action — then he got hurt in the fourth game of his senior year, and interest from schools like San Diego State and Iowa quickly cooled.

“Lost all my offers,” Obialo said. “It was kind of a weird thing. You hear about it all the time with high school people getting hurt. They all just, I guess you could say, ghosted as soon as I got hurt. But I mean, everything happens for a reason. And here I am.”

Obialo got a preferred walk-on offer to Oklahoma State and he made some noise in training camp, but walk-ons playing behind James Washington, Jalen McCleskey, Jhajuan Seales, Chris Lacy and Dillon Stoner don’t have much chance of seeing the field. He did have two catches for the Cowboys, but he saw the reality: he would need to transfer if he was going to play a lot.

So he chose Marshall, a Conference USA school in Huntington, WV.

Obi Obialo / Photo: Marshall University Athletics

“Marshall is a unique place, a special place,” Obialo said. “Just going out there, being from Texas, being a city boy, it was kinda just different getting used to. But the people, the coaches, they all got me up to speed. … I had fun up there and did what I had to do.”

Obialo caught 19 passes for 238 yards as a sophomore, then grabbed 42 for 505 and four touchdowns as a junior. As a senior last year, Obialo played in four games and caught 18 passes for 244 yards, but injured his hand and decided to take a redshirt season.

At the end of the year, he decided to transfer, and Oklahoma, led by the recruiting efforts of inside receivers coach Cale Gundy, looked very appealing.

“It was a few other places, but OU had came and I saw the opportunity,” he said. “I just matched everything up: how close it was to home, offense, coach (Lincoln) Riley and all that stuff — and I just picked Oklahoma.”

Obialo may have played three years at Marshall, but knows what an Oklahoma game looks like. He was at the Bedlam game at OU in 2016, a 38-20 OSU loss, and he remembers an electric atmosphere.

“I remember Dede (Westbrook) on the sideline catching a pass, and he made a defender miss and took it the house,” Obialo said. “That was one play I remember distinctively from that game.”

Along with UCLA transfer Theo Howard, Obialo gives Oklahoma something of an x-factor in the passing game. The Sooners’ receiver corps lacks experience, but that’s pretty much what Howard and Obialo bring.

And talent.

“The pieces that we brought in, Theo (and) Obi, those guys are some playmakers,” said OU junior wideout Charleston Rambo. “One-on-one period, they’re making plays. We need to transfer (that) over to team period. But the plays they do make, I can (see) in a game, like, ‘OK, yeah, we can use those guys.’ ”

Said OU receivers coach Dennis Simmons, “I would praise both of those guys.”

For now, Obialo said he’s playing both the slot receiver position as well as the wide receiver position. He’s still learning the offense and learning about OU, but the idea is that he can use his physical gifts to become an surprisingly productive contributor this season.

“I’m happy to be here,” he said, “and whatever they put me at — receiver, special teams — I'm going to take that role and do the best I can.”

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