If there’s one thing you can say about Oklahoma football recruiting, it’s everything is calculated. All the pieces matter. They all serve a purpose.

Head coach Lincoln Riley hasn’t beaten around the bush about that. The OU brand is incredibly important in promoting the message.

“It gets talked about behind our walls probably more than people outside would imagine,” said Riley last week following the spring game. “Every single little detail. Everything that’s done out there on the field, every video we shoot to promote it, again, I've been really pleased our administration has believed in our vision.”

Believing in the vision is one thing. Executing it is another, and that’s where OU has been able to stay ahead of the curve in recent years.

Led by Annie Hanson, assistant athletic director/recruiting strategy and administrative engagement, and Drew Hill, the director of player personnel, and a cast of others, the OU recruiting department has become a juggernaut.

For the 2018 class, the signing day trading cards were a huge hit in announcing OU’s class on social media in 2018. The same could be said last December for the signing day album covers welcoming the 2019 class to Norman.

That 2019 class became big thanks in large part to what happened at the spring game weekend. It marked the first year where juniors could make official visits, and Riley and staff took a gamble and made it a major recruiting event.

“What if you invest in this? And you do it right? And we got out front,” Riley said. “We didn’t wait for other people to do it, we did it first. It paid dividends with a monster recruiting class that had no more single important date than that spring game last year.”

Almost half the class ended up being in Norman that weekend when it was all said and done. Some committed right then and there, others took their time before announcing.

The bar had been set pretty high, and the recruiting staff was hard at work trying to guarantee the same result for last weekend.

Months and months of planning, and then boom, a major curveball.

Yea, you know that one weekend you’ve been trying to orchestrate for what feels like forever? Oh, we’re going to have to blow it up because of the weather. The game is moving from a Saturday afternoon to a Friday evening.

“Whoa,” said Hill about his first thoughts on the move. “You’re changing an entire schedule, an entire game with three days to do it. I thought the entire recruiting staff, entire coaching staff did a great job of not panicking.”

Initially, the ideas on how to rebound from that schedule change seemed a bit too much. With so many top-tier recruits expected in Norman once again, you couldn’t have a misstep. However, when it became clear the move was going down, all they could do was put their heads down and get to work.

"The first thing was getting in touch with all the recruits and their families," said Hanson. "The goal there was to let them all know the change wouldn’t impact their travel schedules at all. It would just alter how the 48 hours allotted for an official visit were going to be used."

Then it was examining the itinerary. A Friday night game gave OU a first-time opportunity to have the spring game under the lights. That would create its own excitement. After that, it was about finding what else could be done.

That’s where OU struck gold.

“In doing so, I think because we were able to review, I think we were able to accomplish more than we would have had the game been Saturday,” Hanson said. “I’m just so proud of our staff. I attribute a lot of our success to the hard work and coming together and sacrificing some sleep to get things done.”

By now, everybody has seen it. Either from Riley or some member of the OU coaching staff. OU took the official visitors and their families to Chesapeake Arena on Saturday night, the home of the Oklahoma City Thunder.

The inclement weather hit as predicted making Saturday basically an all-indoor event. And it just so happened that the Thunder began the NBA Playoffs the following day in Portland against the Trail Blazers.

So there it went down. All the OU coaches and staff and official visitors and player hosts, all the trophies and championships on display.

All on accident.

Had the game been Saturday afternoon as planned, that moment never would have went down. Hill said they probably would have stayed on campus and done things business as usual. It still would have been a positive, but it wouldn’t have resonated quite like the trip to The Peake.

“That was not initially on the schedule,” Hanson said. “Coach Riley and I sat down and were playing out ideas and what would make a huge splash in the time that we had.

“I threw out the idea of going to the arena, knowing that would be something different nobody else could do within the 30-mile radius of campus. When we started to put the pieces together, I got together with Thunder personnel on the strategy of that event and ended up creating a plan that was pretty seamless and pretty successful.”

The spring game was officially moved last Tuesday. Hanson said the first call to Thunder representatives was made last Wednesday morning, and the wheels just kept turning. It took cooperation from everybody, Hanson said. Not just recruiting, but every part of the OU program and cooperation from the Thunder.

Bottom line, it was all worth it.

“The feedback we got from everybody was, ‘thank you.’ Nobody wants to sit through that (bad weather),” Hill said. “You just adjust and move on.”

The eye emoji has usually represented a commitment for the Sooners. So far, two recruits have gone public in announcing their pledge to OU. It would surprise no one if the Sooners score a lot more in the upcoming weeks and months.

The recruiting staff adjusted, and now it’s moving on. That’s the nature of the recruiting game. Knock it out of the park one day, figure out how you’re going to do that again the next.

“That’s what our team does on a daily basis,” Hill said. “Once you come up with a good hashtag, you have to come up with another, right? The good thing is you have time to sit back and look at what was great and how we can make it better.”

Allowed a couple of days to breathe, OU went right back to work.

“I think after this weekend, it goes to show there’s always ways to keep getting better,” Hanson said. “We just went back to the drawing board today (Tuesday). We have some new things in store for the months to come. You have to continue to find ways to keep doing more.”