Oklahoma's Commitment From 5-Star WR Brandon Inniss Has 'A True Sense of Finality'

In the wake of a decommitment from the No. 1 wideout in the 2022 class, the Sooners now have a pledge from the No. 1 wideout in the 2023 class.

Sunday’s news about Brandon Inniss offering a verbal commitment to Oklahoma came at just about the right time.

The sting was still hot from just five days earlier, when Luther Burden pulled his 10-month-old commitment from the Sooners and became the third wideout to decommit from OU in a nine-week span.

They’re in two different classes — Burden is in 2022, Inniss 2023 — but Lincoln Riley can now effectively refute any negative recruiting, like false rumors about systemic problems in the receiver room.

Riley can  also still say he’s got a pledge from the No. 1 high school receiver in the country. That used to be Burden. Now it's Inniss.

The question Sooner Nation wants answered now is how do Riley and wide receivers coach Dennis Simmons and the OU staff keep Inniss in the fold for the next 16 months or so — until early National Signing Day in December 2022?

“It’s going to be about consistency and trying to get him back to Norman as many times as possible,” said SI All-American director of recruiting John Garcia. “You know that that Burden decommitment, in particular, really didn’t sit well in Norman. I got a text to my inbox saying ‘Hey is there something going on with the wide receivers coach? Why are all these (receivers) decommitting?’“

The tenuous part for Riley is that Inniss has said that he fully intends to take all his official visits. Burden said the same thing.

Being such a high-profile South Florida prospect, he’ll continue to hear from his other finalists — Alabama, Miami and Ohio State — plus in-state overtures from schools like Florida and Florida State as well as Clemson, Georgia and plenty of others.

Now it’s on Riley, Simmons and the OU staff to keep the 6-foot, 190-pound Inniss fully engaged.

Garcia, who interviewed Inniss on Friday night following his American Heritage team’s season opening loss to IMG Academy, described how Inniss plans on dealing with it.

“He acknowledged that when we spoke on Friday night,” Garcia told SI Sooners, “and he said, ‘Look, I’m gonna handle this thing respectfully.’ He’s not necessarily going to seek out contact between these different coaching staffs. But with respect, he is going to, you know, let people know he’s headed to Oklahoma.”

Garcia said the beauty of a commitment from Inniss this early is that he has already received more than 40 scholarship offers and “there’s nothing really left, from a recruiting perspective, for Brandon to attain. He’s got every scholarship offer.

“I think there’s there's a true sense of finality in this — although the calendar may tell you otherwise — given he’s a class of 2023 recruit.”

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