All schools were obviously thrown a recruiting curveball because of COVID-19 when authorized visits were shut down in the beginning of March.

Luckily for Oklahoma, the Sooners had five-star quarterback Caleb Williams to do a lot of the heavy lifting, too.

Williams officially committed July 4, but it was obvious the work he was doing behind the scenes from essentially March on and how vital he was in helping the #LincUpXXI class come together.

“Offered him early, had one guy commit first so we ended up backing off because I knew we were only going to take one, and I’ve always been very honest with guys like that,” head coach Lincoln Riley said. “Obviously, things changed and we went back after Caleb hard because we knew there was no doubt at that point that’s who I wanted, who we wanted.

“It was a great process, though. He certainly became one of the leaders of this class. Honestly, his recruitment was a lot of fun.”

A lot of fun combined with some supreme self-confidence. At one-point fellow five-star quarterback Brock Vandagriff was committed to OU, and according to Riley, that never deterred Williams.

“Probably one of the things that really drew me to him was when we had a previous player committed, he and his father were willing to come here and walk-on,” Riley said. “Not many people would have been willing to do that.”

Of course, Williams never had to when Vandagriff backed off his OU pledge and ended up signing with Georgia.

But Williams wasn’t done repping OU just yet because the ‘Sooner Summit’ is something that will be talked about perhaps for years to come.

OU has already landed one uncommitted prospect from that event in four-star offensive tackle Savion Byrd, and the Williams-led weekend event in August is still resonating despite the incredibly strict guidelines to how it had to go down.

“It was something that we couldn’t be a part of. That was made pretty clear to us. Our compliance department did a great job of advising us on that,” Riley said. “There was so much about this pandemic and then in turn the dead period, so much about this changed the entire process. Everybody sees, ‘Yeah OK, they can’t come on visits.’ But it changed so much.

“And you had this constant push/pull with these players and families that were wanting to see not only Oklahoma but places all over the country. You’re sitting there as a parent trying to envision, ‘How am I going to send my child somewhere with maybe some people I’ve never met, a place that I’ve never seen?’ So it was a constant push/pull of that.”

Fellow five-star prospects Tristan Leigh (Jan. 2) and Camar Wheaton (Dec. 23) were also at The Summit, and the Sooners are hoping for more good news from that duo when they make their respective call.

OU is Two-Sport U

No doubt the Sooner Summit was one of the biggest storylines for the 2021 class, but if you want another, the two-sport U moniker is right up there.

Not just two sports, but for a lot of the recruits, two different positions for football, too.

“One, it shows a willingness to compete. That’s a big part of it,” Riley said. “Two, it shows the trust that their high school coaches have in them. Most people, if they’re that good of a player, coaches are going to find any and every way possible to use those guys.

“Three, it shows their football IQ. What are they able to process? What are they able to understand? For so many of those guys, regardless of where they end up playing in college, those experiences help them become better players.”

You look at someone like Billy Bowman, who can excel in all three phases of the game. Or a Damond Harmon who can play anywhere in the secondary. OU has prided itself in its ability to recruit versatility time and time again.

And then there’s the two-sport approach. Basketball has been the big sport for defensive prospects like Jordan Mukes and Nathan Rawlins-Kibonge. And then there’s baseball for five-star wide receiver Mario Williams.

Of course, the Sooners have the successful track record with Kyler Murray to fall back on and show recruits what can be done.

“I thought we really worked well together,” Riley said. “Anybody that’s got aspirations, they can look at OU and say, not only do I see that they’ll give me that opportunity, but two, I can see that it can be done at a high level. And being done at a high level, obviously, the majority, obviously, the credit and all of it goes to the athletes. And deservedly so.

“But there is so much thought and organization that has to go into making it possible and having a good setup, that we’ve been able to go through it a little bit. So I think that’s helped us in a lot of ways. Certainly a lot of two-sport athletes, it’s caught their eyes. Mario was no different.”

Small class not a surprise

SoonerScoop.com has tried to hammer it home, but Riley did it as well in trying to say the class was going to be smaller.

When you can’t evaluate in person, when you have the transfer portal, there are elements that made a 25-member class just not really feasible.

“For us, as a staff as we saw this pandemic was ongoing and especially once we found out and had a pretty good idea that we weren’t going to be able to get out back out and see these kids again, we knew at that point this was going to be a pretty small class,” Riley said. “Normally you may see a guy in late fall or when you were out for an evaluation day or even out right now, seeing a couple of guys that you really liked and ended up signing at the end. There were some temptation to do that for us, but at the end of the day, we want to know the guys that we’re signing.”

OU currently has 16 signees. No doubt the Sooners want a couple of more like Wheaton and Leigh. But there is zero chance of this class going beyond 20, and that’s OK.

The Sooners have an incredibly high average star rating per recruit, and it absolutely sounds like the transfer portal is going to be something to watch for OU heading into the 2021 season.

Videos pay homage to virtual recruiting

It has become a thing now of anticipating what OU’s recruiting department, led by Annie Hanson, Drew Hill and Chip Viney and Zack Hefley, are going to do.

This year was a little different, at least on the surface. The virtual era of recruiting became a big point of emphasis, and without giving away too much, OU had some fun with it in its social media presentation of the signees.

The coaches showed off their “acting” chops, too, but it was a way to breathe a bit with how crazy this COVID-19 era of recruiting went this cycle.

“One, it was somewhat in the mold of what we did on our virtual visits,” Riley said. “Not to give everything away, but I think our signees are going to be able to pick up on a lot of that. That kind of became the world that we live.

“And I think some of it was also an attempt to have a little bit of fun and some comedic relief, with all that we’ve been going through pandemic and everyone becoming Zoom experts. Just all the different things we’ve gone through, we thought it was important to be able to smile and laugh a little bit. Hopefully we hit the mark. I think our guys did and did a great job.”