To doubt 2021 OU quarterback commitment Caleb Williams,’ and his father Carl, isn’t a good idea. Carl Williams isn’t guided by the conventional.
He once told Lincoln Riley if he didn’t offer his son a scholarship, he might show up anyway if they decided Oklahoma was the best place for his son to play college football.
“If we decide if this is the best place for him, this is where he’ll be. It won’t matter. And you’re going to have one hell of a competition on your hands,” laughed Carl Williams when thinking back to his first meeting with Riley. “That’s what it is right? I think (Riley) understood that. We approached it a little bit differently.”
Carl Williams approaches a lot of things differently. Even before his son made his commitment to Oklahoma public, he was already planning the Sooner Summit. Not just an unofficial recruiting weekend at Oklahoma. But an unsanctioned, possibly unwelcome gathering at the University of Oklahoma.
We’re in the age of the coronavirus. Universities are fighting to stay open as campuses almost have longer COVID19 precautions and procedures than the NCAA has bylaws.
I was a doubter it would ever happen.
But just like his son’s college decision, Carl was looking at things from a different perspective.
Another concern I had was in OU’s compliance department and whether they would make things so restrictive as to make dead period unofficial visitors feel almost unwelcome.
“I know (Caleb) was very clear in his blog and we painstakingly went out of our way to follow the rules,” explained Carl Williams of the NCAA restrictions. “OU was very clear to us what the rules were and anytime it got close to (breaking a rule) we said, ‘Nope we can’t do that!’ And then we had to figure out how to do things a different way.”
The Williams’ ended up pulling it off in a more impactful way than I could have ever imagined. And maybe the biggest way to measure their success in putting together an unofficial dead period recruiting weekend in the middle of a pandemic is seen in how rival fans reacted.
They were pissed off and declaring foul play.
“That’s always a good thing right?,” Carl Williams laughed when told how upset Texas and Texas A&M fans were about the recruiting weekend. “When we did the university visit we had to do it like regular students, through the admissions office. We had to arrange it with the admissions office ourselves. There were no football people involved. Everybody there was just a prospective student.”
There has been talk of other players taking unofficial dead period visits over the past couple of months. And even some reports that coaches would facetime recruits as they walked across their campus.
OU compliance made it clear to the football staff that they were not allowed to have any contact with recruits while they were physically on campus.
No phone calls, no texts, no facetime, no Zooms.
Those restrictions led to a unique workaround for Carl Williams and his wife at one point during the weekend.
“It got to the point where I needed to call somebody just to talk about what we were doing and (making sure) we weren’t breaking rules. So I had to send his mom off campus and text her which questions to ask so she could bring me the answers back,” laughed Carl Williams. “She went to Wal-Mart. She brought Gatorades back to all the guys. We were on campus, she goes off campus and I send her away with some questions and she comes back with the answers and Gatorade.”
Williams said he would rate the weekend an 85 on a scale of 100 in his eyes.
The only real problems he says they encountered during the weekend were things no one could really control in the age of COVID19.
“I had so many recommendations for restaurants but then you make a reservation and all of a sudden the group goes from 12 to 18 and then from 18 to 30 and all of a sudden no one can accommodate that many people,” Carl explained. “Then you’ve got to go, 'Uh oh!', It was that kind of stuff. It was nothing that was bad. It was all positive.”
As for the recruiting part of things, Carl Williams was all smiles when talking about the players who showed up and how much the Sooner Summit is going to benefit his son’s future team.
“The commitments are important and I think they’re going to come. I’ve got a really good feeling and a good sense from the guys that they’re going to come,” he said.
And as the father of a quarterback, Carl was certainly impressed to see offensive linemen Savion Byrd and Tristen Leigh in attendance.
“Well the linemen were all huge with is a good thing for a quarterback’s dad,” said Carl Williams. “Having highly rated and highly touted, huge linemen in front of you, that’s a big deal for a quarterback’s dad. So that’s one impression.”
Throughout the weekend, Williams seemed happiest that the players really seemed to enjoy the weekend as a group.
With football season’s being cancelled or facing uncertainty, with players all over the country missing out on official visits due to the NCAA extending the dead period month after month, Carl Williams seemed to take a lot of pride in just giving players and their families a respite from the dog days of the pandemic.
“These were all super cool kids. We had a few of them that were riding with us because we rented an Expedition so even if they had parents with them the boys would jump in with us because the boys just wanted to be together,” explained Carl Williams. “They wanted to get together and enjoy each other. Even the time in the car was cool. They were playing music and laughing and joking and it was just good stuff. Lots of good stuff.
“Every day got better. We got there Thursday and there were 4 or 5 kids and then Friday there were like 12 or 14 and then Saturday, in the morning there were like 18 and by the last day there was like 22 or something. It just kept growing.”
As for Caleb Williams’ immediate future. You just have to go back to the time he told Riley they had a plan whether OU offered or not.
It fits right in with Carl and Caleb’s plans moving forward. He has no plans to transfer after his high school cancelled fall football.
He's exactly where he's supposed to be.
“Caleb could have gone to any high school in the metropolitan area and even some other places. I got a call from IMG yesterday. He could have gone there for free but we chose this place because it was the right place for him,” said Carl. “We’re never going to be driven by that kind of thing. We want to make the right decision because ultimately we want to end up in the right place.”
And that place was also not at a high school in Oklahoma. Carl says he and Caleb never discussed the possibility of transferring to a school inside the Sooner state during the trip to the OKC metro.
“Never crossed our mind. We’re going to be fine,” he said. “You outwork everybody and you go find a way to win. That’s the way the kid’s been raised and that’s what we expect him to do and we’re going to invest in that. That’s how we live, that’s how we think and that’s what we do.”
Don’t doubt Carl and Caleb Williams.
After the Sooner Summit, I won’t be making that mistake again.
