Fresh off a remarkable season in which he entered fall camp as an afterthought and quickly emerged as Oklahoma's most reliable backfield option, bruising running back Tawee Walker has announced that he'll enter the NCAA transfer portal.

The 5-foot-9, 215-pound Las Vegas native, who left the junior-college ranks in the spring of 2022 to join the Oklahoma program as a walk-on, rushed for 496 yards and seven scores this past season for the Sooners. The highlights of his campaign included a pair of touchdown runs in OU's upset of Texas, and a career-high 146 rushing yards in a road loss to Kansas.

Though he saw irregular usage throughout nonconference play, Walker seized the bull by the horns once the Sooners hit the Big 12 slate, and he outpaced Marcus Major and Jovantae Barnes to become the lead dog in the backfield. He finished the 2023 campaign averaging 5.2 yards per carry, though he ceded starting duty down the stretch to a healthy Gavin Sawchuk.

A lightly recruited safety out of high school, Walker spent one year at a post-graduate football institution before taking a year off football altogether. He resurfaced in 2021 at Palomar Junior College, where he rushed for well over 1,000 yards and drew the attention of numerous FCS and Group of 5 programs. However, when DeMarco Murray offered him the chance to walk on at Oklahoma, Walker committed to the Sooners before ever visiting the school. Upon joining the program, he quickly rose to third on the depth chart with his bruising, low-to-the-ground running style, and logged 18 carries for 62 yards in the 2022 season.

Walker did serve a brief midseason suspension, which arose from a post-practice spat with Murray and resulted in his absence for the Sooners' 31-29 victory over UCF. He returned with a vengeance the following week against the Jayhawks, but sustained an injury at the tail end of his career day. That opened the door for Sawchuk to inherit bell-cow reps in the backfield, and the sophomore from Colorado rushed for 100-plus yards in each of the Sooners' final four games of the regular season. Meanwhile, after toting the ball 23 times against Kansas, Walker accrued just 19 carries over those four games as Sawchuk shined.

There will likely be plenty of interest in Walker's services, as he's one of the hardest runners in the nation and enters the portal with one year of eligibility remaining. He is the third portal loss of the week for the Sooners, as wide receiver DJ Graham and tight end Jason Llewellyn previously announced their intentions to transfer.

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