Across the pond to Norman: British OL Daniel Akinkunmi picks Oklahoma
Remarkably, Bill Bedenbaugh inked a signee from each of the four time zones in the contiguous United States last year.
But evidently, the Sooners’ offensive line coach still wasn’t satisfied with the breadth of his geographical footprint on the recruiting trail, because he’s gone international in the 2024 cycle.
Bedenbaugh and Oklahoma just picked up a commitment from three-star OL Daniel Akinkunmi, a 6-foot-5, 320-pound native of Loughborough, England. Akinkunmi chose the Sooners over offers from Clemson, Miami, Nebraska, Penn State and many others, and he becomes the fourth offensive lineman to join Bedenbaugh’s 2024 class.
The Sooners haven’t signed a player from outside the States since pulling Neville Gallimore out of Canada in the class of 2015. Naturally, the Oklahoma staff doesn’t make a habit of recruiting on an intercontinental basis, as the logistics alone are a major deterrent. But they made an exception with Akinkunmi, who’s honed his skills in the UK for the past two years with the NFL Academy. If you’ve got questions about the development and recruitment process of a young football player in Europe, you’re not alone. Fortunately, Akinkunmi shed plenty of light on the subject in an August interview with OUInsider.
At the time of the interview, Akinkunmi was preparing for a September slate of five official visits. He planned to see Oklahoma, Michigan, Clemson, Miami and Ole Miss, which were the five schools he’d identified as his finalists. The first of those five scheduled trips was the journey to OU, which had extended an offer in July. And when he packed for the trip from England to the Sooner State, he made sure to include one very important piece of equipment: a gimbal for his smartphone.
A budding content creator who maintains a YouTube channel for over a thousand subscribers, Akinkunmi had previously produced a video chronicle of his June official visit to Baylor. He planned to do the same at Oklahoma. After covering over 4,500 miles in the air, Akinkunmi and his mother touched down at Will Rogers World Airport, where a vehicle stood ready and waiting to transport them to Norman.
It may merely have been the disruption of his circadian rhythm, but Akinkunmi maintains that his first impressions of Oklahoma were less than sterling. However, the experience began to improve significantly after his first night of sleep.
“I felt like at first, it was a bit of a rocky start; wasn’t really sure if I was feeling it or not,” Akinkunmi told OUInsider. “The second day was a very big difference. I think the main thing for me was watching film with Coach Bedenbaugh and watching the game. The team has changed so much. Just to see that in person — the defense, offense, how effective they are — it was amazing to see. It really showed me how much Coach Venables has changed the program.”
The second day of his official visit also happened to be the first Saturday of the 2023 season for Oklahoma. Amidst a packed house of over eighty thousand fans dressed in crimson and cream, Akinkunmi witnessed his very first college football game. The Sooners thrashed Arkansas State 73-0, and Akinkunmi captured all of the action — on and off the field — with his handy gimbal.
Once the festivities had concluded at Owen Field, though, it was time to stop shooting the film and start watching the film.
“After the game, I was in the locker room with the players getting hyped,” said Akinkunmi. “But after Coach Bedenbaugh came back from having a shower and getting ready and stuff, we went to go and watch the film. We went to go and watch the whole game. I felt like that experience was one of the biggest factors of me committing, to see Coach Bedenbaugh go through film. The passion, the detail [with which] he goes through film is insane. I’ve never seen it before. He was watching film and he was seeing the smallest details that [were] wrong, and complaining about them and sighing. I’m talking, they’re taking one tiny wrong step with their foot and he’s like, ‘WHAT are you doing?!’ Just to see that and see how detailed he is, [it] just shows why he’s been such a great coach.”
And while Akinkunmi was quickly falling in love with Bedenbaugh’s sharp football mind, his mother was falling in love just as quickly with the campus environment in Norman.
“The fact it was a college town was a very big factor for my mom — she knew it was not a small town, but she knew it was a close community,” Akinkunmi remarked. “Coach Bedenbaugh [said] the reason he hasn’t left Oklahoma and Norman is because he loves Norman. I feel like that’s something that really excited my mom. For a coach to stay there, to decline multiple offers to coach in the NFL or to get more money, and to stay in Norman just because he likes Norman… really sat with my mom. To know that, she was over the moon.”
And by the third and final day of the official visit, Akinkunmi was ready to throw his meticulously crafted September schedule out the window. When he crossed the threshold of Brent Venables’ house, Akinkunmi was a starry-eyed British kid with a poker chip in his pocket. By the time he left, he was a Sooner.
“Danny Okoye was the person I was on my visit with,” he recalled. “Obviously, Danny couldn’t say it all in his interviews because I hadn’t committed yet and my announcement hadn’t come, but me and Danny actually committed at the same time at Coach Venables’ house. So Coach Venables gave us a speech, [him] and Coach Chavis. And me and Danny looked at each other and was like, ‘That’s the most real thing we’ve heard out of our whole recruiting journey.’
“The way Coach Venables and Coach Chav was talking — Coach Chav gave a story of his wife. She was born and bred, lived in Clemson, her whole family was in Clemson. And he said the story of how his wife said yes to going to Norman, Oklahoma straight away as soon as she heard that Coach Venables was the head coach. Because she knew how much Coach Venables changed [Chavis] as a person, as a man, overall. I felt like something like that has just never been said to me, and we felt like it was so real. Danny was actually the first to commit; he had a conversation with his mom beforehand. So I think he already made his decision before he entered the building. So after Danny committed and handed in his chip, me and my mom went to go have a conversation in the back.
“We had a couple words, probably a five, ten-minute conversation. We come back in, and I look at Coach Venables, and I was like, ‘Coach, I’m ready to rock with you. I’m ready to ride and die for this team.’ And I handed in my chip. I committed on the spot, right there and then. Everyone was happy, over the moon. I feel like a lot of people didn’t expect me to commit on the spot, purely because everything was planned out with me going to visit after visit after visit and then making my decision. I’ll be honest: myself, I was not expecting it. But when you see something like that, you just can’t waste time. What’s the point of wasting time and going on many different visits when you can just start focusing and honing in on where you want to go?”
On the first evening of his visit, Akinkunmi wasn’t sure if he could see a future at Oklahoma. Less than 48 hours later, he couldn’t see a future anywhere but Oklahoma.
And though there was no singular factor that solidified Akinkunmi’s decision, there was one thing that impressed him all weekend in his peer-to-peer interactions. As he conversed with the players within the program, Akinkunmi began to realize that the culture Venables has instilled at Oklahoma is a perfect fit for his personal mentality. Particularly because he hails from overseas, Akinkunmi is no stranger to doubters — and after a rocky 2022 season, neither is the Oklahoma locker room.
“They all just want to win,” Akinkunmi said of the Sooners’ players. “They’re tired of all the conversations and all the media saying this and that. They just want to go out there and show who they are. And I feel like this year, the biggest change was, none of the players was talking about, ‘I came here because I’m trying to go to the league.’ All the players are there to try and win in the moment. They’re trying to win natties; they’re trying to win championships in the moment. They’re trying to live the experience in that moment. And I feel like that’s something special.
“A lot of teams you go to, a lot of players will be there and say, like, ‘I want to go to the league. I’m trying to stay here for three years and get out and leave.’ Obviously, that’s great and whatever, but with this team, I just feel like it came so natural to them. They just wanted to win. If they had opportunity to go to the league, to go to the draft, then they did. But it was not a key factor and it was not like they were only there to get drafted and leave the team. They were there to be a family, win games, win natties. And I feel like that mentality is something that will change a team.”
And as Akinkunmi noted, the OU family extends well beyond the walls of the Switzer Center and the sidelines at Owen Field. Throughout his brief time in Oklahoma, he came face-to-face with the sheer magnitude of Sooner football within state lines.
“The fans are amazing; I can’t even explain it,” Akinkunmi remarked. “I got off at the airport [in] Oklahoma and I had people recognize me, saying, ‘Are you the guy from the UK who’s going on the visit? Enjoy your visit! Go and have fun!’ Just to have that is crazy. From walking around on my visit, going to have Cane’s in [the] college center, what’s crazy [is] I had a bunch more people saying, ‘Are you the kid from the UK? Can you take a picture with my son?’ It was amazing to see. The fanbase is something special, and the love they showed is amazing.”
And ever since he officially joined that family back on Sept. 3, Akinkunmi has fully embraced his new identity as a Sooner. In fact, he was as excited as anyone when Oklahoma knocked off third-ranked Texas last Saturday in a memorable iteration of a fabled rivalry series.
“I was there watching the whole entire game,” said Akinkunmi. “I’ve been committed for a while now, but obviously it’s been silent. So I was there watching the whole game, and I saw them win. I saw Danny Okoye’s post of him yelling, shouting, screaming — and I was like, ‘Ah, I want to do the same thing!’ But obviously, I [wasn’t] publicly committed yet.”
It’s only been a few days, but Oklahoma’s heart-stopping 34-30 victory over the Longhorns has already shaped a new national narrative. The rest of the college football world is waking up to the Sooners, who vaulted from No. 12 all the way to No. 5 in the newest AP poll. And Akinkunmi is thoroughly convinced that in the aftermath of a statement win, OU is on the verge of turning a major corner.
“Just to see that efficiency of the offense was amazing,” he observed. “You can tell they rep that out in practice, those type of situations, all the time. For them to have two minutes and score within 30 or 40 seconds was crazy. I feel like the offense and the coaching staff and the whole team in general is in such a sync that it’s going to start to get to a point where it’s going to be unbreakable, and just turns into something really special and starts to become a national championship-winning team. And I really do believe that.”
With regard to any negative perceptions of his heritage, Akinkunmi is adamant: he won’t face a learning curve in getting acquainted with the game. Nobody’s going to have to dumb down the X’s and O’s for him when he arrives in Norman. He’s determined to be ready from the get-go.
“I understand football,” he maintained. “I’m coming in to be a true freshman and to be a leader, to [make] a big impact straight away. I ain’t coming to play around, mess around and be on the bench for a couple years. I’m coming in to play and start. So to hear that from the coaching staff, saying, ‘Be ready, because you’re probably going to get a chance of starting your first year,’ was amazing to me. Just to hear that from the coaches just showed they believe in me, and believe in my ability and my talent.”
And oh, by the way, the video turned out great.
“Yeah, a lot of people absolutely loved the video,” Akinkunmi laughed. “I got a bunch of messages of people saying, ‘Thank you so much for posting the video. I have never seen an OV be done by Oklahoma before; I’ve never seen the coaches in this type of way.’ So it was great to see something [that] I thought was so small was so big and meant a lot to a lot of people.”
Rivals considers Akinkunmi the No. 23 offensive guard in the 2024 cycle, and he joins Isaiah Autry, Eugene Brooks and Josh Aisosa in the Sooners’ offensive line contingent. Top targets Eddy Pierre-Louis and Grant Brix remain uncommitted for the moment, but Oklahoma hopes to tack the two national top-100 prospects on to Bedenbaugh’s already impressive haul.
And the Sooners’ most recent addition to the group isn’t backing down from the challenge that lies ahead.
“They’re getting a dedicated, motivated, passionate leader who wants to come in and impact the team,” Akinkunmi declared. “I’m coming in to help this team win championships, to win natties. We’re going into the SEC — the biggest and baddest, like everyone likes to call it. [It’s] the best conference in college football. But what I can say, and what I know: We’re coming. We’re coming to dominate the SEC.”
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