Recruiting at 5-5 is 'Not Ideal,' But Oklahoma Coaches Say Prospects See Opportunity

A winning track record shows this season is more of an anomaly, but Venables still prefers to recruit on relationships and authenticity.

NORMAN — Nobody at Oklahoma wants to admit it, but losing games, bitter as it might be, can create opportunities in recruiting.

“It's not ideal,” said OU defensive coordinator Ted Roof. “No, it's certainly not how we would like to draw it up. But at the same time, there's opportunities that come with that.”

The Sooners are accustomed to recruiting from the top of the standings, meaning they’re the team on top, they’re the team that prospects consider because it’s one of the places where winning happens so frequently and so consistently, it’s just assumed.

So what happens when a team with a championship pedigree falls to 5-5, as OU is ahead of Saturday’s Bedlam showdown with Oklahoma State?

Whether it’s members of the 2023 class still pondering their immediate future, or guys in the 2024 class looking down the road, there are immediate job openings on this Oklahoma roster. This team needs help.

“From opportunity, as far as guys that maybe we have committed and maybe we're still recruiting, absolutely,” head coach Brent Venables said. “I think that's attractive.”

According to 247 Sports, the Sooners’ 2023 class ranks No. 7 in the nation. It had climbed as high as No. 3 and recently stood at No. 5, but two recent decommitments dropped them.

The prize of the class, quarterback Jackson Arnold, remains verbally committed and by all accounts is actively recruiting what he hopes are future teammates at OU.

“Start with the beginning,” Venables said. “Like, say we had a top-notch quarterback committed. Like, he could go anywhere in the country and schools are still coming after him, really hard — excellent schools that are in those big games that you're talking about or are having those successful seasons.

“But somehow, some way he continues to stay loyal to you because he sees a vision. He sees track record. He has dreams to have this amazing opportunity at your school, and he's developed these relationships that mean something to him.”

Venables spoke about the importance of having a winning pedigree. Recruits are smart enough to see through one down season. An up and down year is not necessarily endemic of a struggling program. OU still leads all Big 12 teams with four College Football Playoff appearances and owns as many conference titles (14) as everyone else combined.

“There’s a track record,” Venables said. “OK, we're … 5-5. So it's been how many ever years it's been, a long time, since Oklahoma has been 5-5. I've never been 5-5.”

Venables and his staff also make sure recruits know why things have gone sideways for this year’s team.

“I think you have to be real and practical,” Venables said. “I think this is the biggest roster turnover that's ever happened here. Right? I think that's fair to say. So that's never happened until now too. So I think a lot goes into it.”

Venables has said before he doesn’t really need to conduct a sales pitch. Oklahoma, he posits, sells itself.

But during his weekly press conference on Tuesday, selling is exactly how he described it.

“You can sell,” he said, “again, you're looking for anything, right? You’re in the sales business. I think you'd be negligent if you didn’t. So hey … three of the losses are one-score losses and comes down on the last drive of the game. We got to be a little better. We got a lot of things got to be better. But there's there's a track record of success.

“Certainly schemes, on both sides of the ball, and coaches’ experience in big games and successful teams and things of that nature, I think that goes a long way. And we have a long history, not a winning season here, winning season there. I'm talking about a long history of success.”

A lot more goes into it, of course. For Venables, records are worth the paper they’re written on. Schemes change. History to recruits is what happened within the last three years. Venables prefers something more permanent.

“In the recruiting game, on their side of it, they're trying to know people and what's real and what isn't as well,” he said. “And so you come from a place of genuineness and authenticity. I think people see that, you know, when you're being real and you're being honest and it's relationship driven.”

The work this staff did to quickly reconstruct the 2022 recruiting class was certainly admirable. Their achievements in building the 2023 class has been nothing short of remarkable. It’s early, but their staying power will be revealed when the 2024 class begins to settle in.

“The guys that we're recruiting,” Roof said, “we're excited about the future with them. And they see the opportunity. So we're looking forward to getting them in the boat and moving on.”

The positive spin on the defections from 2023 is that while those players are good, Oklahoma will get other good players before Dec. 21. The negative spin is that there are cracks in Venables’ foundation, that recruits are leaving a sinking ship.

Said Venables, “I think some of those things, through all the noise and what can be negativity — and listen, if I'm on the other side of it, man, I'm using all that, too, if I'm recruiting against (OU). That's what I'd be saying. I’d say, ‘Hey, are you sure?’ So it just comes with it.

“You know, if you don’t like it, do something else. I'm just saying as a recruiter, talking about myself — I don't mind it. I expect it. My job is to protect it and have a voice of reason. And if at some point somebody wants to move on, that’s OK too. You know, there's plenty of guys. There's a whole long line of people, you know, all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico that’d love that, for an opportunity to come here. And our job is to always be ready in that regard.

“And sometimes you lost this one — and this has happened many times through the years — you lost this great one, the one that you couldn't ever lose, don't lose him, he’s that one. And then you get something else. And because of it, you replace it with someone else and then this other one comes in and is amazing. That's happened, time and time and time again.”

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