Oklahoma Coaches Say July Recruiting Boon Was a 'Locomotive Going Down That Track'
NORMAN — Bill Bedenbaugh was in the Bahamas, celebrating both his son’s birthday and his wedding anniversary — and getting a little needed decompression time on the beach — when Oklahoma picked up two offensive line commitments.
“I think I'm going to move there,” Bedenbaugh said. “I’ll coach from there. They've got that Zoom stuff, you know what I mean? But yeah, it was good. It was actually probably one of the best weeks. … Pretty good vacation.”
It was that kind of July for the Sooners’ coaching staff, who landed nine verbal commitments in all — plus one on June 30 and another on Aug. 1.
The early knock on Brent Venables was that he was a slow starter in the recruiting realm — or worse, that he just couldn’t keep pace with other powerhouse programs.
Those theories were flushed in July. Venables’ pace, it turns out, was quite deliberate.
That virtually unprecedented surge pushed OU from No. 41 at the start of July to No. 6 in the current 247 Sports team rankings, with a handful of other pledges expected in the coming weeks.
“We really felt great that, although maybe some other people got more commitments earlier,” Veanbles said, “that we would get the right ones at the right time, and had the depth of what commitment really looks like.”
With the way OU finished June and roared through July — then got off to a quick start in August with Monday’s verbal from 4-star edge rusher Colton Vasek — Venables’ inaugural recruiting efforts so far have surpassed anything anyone expected.
Venables said shortly after he was hired that he wouldn’t be burning up the camp circuit or shotgunning offers to prospects, but instead was insistent on getting recruits to the Norman campus. That’s where OU’s recruiting foundation would lie, he said — and he followed through.
“Once you get into the month of June and the last part of July — but in June, in particular — for official visits, you're competing to get guys on campus,” Venables said. “Getting the right ones and having a narrow focus through the course of the spring to figure out the guys that we really wanted to target, guys that were great fits for how we’re trying to build our program and get them on campus and create a vision for them and their families that they could buy into, have some perseverance and endurance, having that mindset.
“There’s a patience that goes with that, but also a game plan that you’re ready to execute if things don’t go your way.”
Receivers coach Cale Gundy underscored the Bedenbaugh Bahamas story by explaining how recruiting never, ever stops.
“We’ve worked extremely hard,” Gundy said. “And it's not easy. It's not easy at all. … Sometimes people think, ‘Oh, it's easy because you're Oklahoma.’ It's not easy. I mean, you still you got to work every single day.
“I get questions all the time, you know, ‘When do you guys — when is recruiting time?’ Recruiting, as you know, is 365 days a year. And you know, with that cell phone and social media and text messages, I mean, it's a lot of hard work.”
Cornerbacks coach Jay Valai echoed Venables about the importance of getting recruits on campus.
“When they come here, they feel us,” Valai said. “You know, my favorite quote, Dr. Maya Angelou, ‘People don’t remember what you say, but how you make them feel.’ (Recruits are) going places, places places — ‘Hey, how you doing, buddy? OK, see you later.’ And that's not how we are.”
Defensive ends coach Miguel Chavis also likes his chances when he gets recruits on campus.
“I think recruiting takes — I don’t know what it takes,” Chavis said. “This is my first year. What the heck do I know? But I love it because Oklahoma’s an easy sell. … When you’re passionate about someone or something, it’s just really easy to talk about. And so it’s fun.”
Chavis’ post after Vasek’s commitment showed a proud if primal victory scream, one that was a clear culmination of the effort and emotion he put into landing the son of Longhorn parents out of the city of Austin.
“It’s really, really fun,” Chavis said. “I love it. I probably have more fun than I should. But at the end of the day, recruiting is kind of the mode and the medium for where I get to come into contact with the guys that I will be developing for the next four years, helping them grow into men that they’re destined to be.”
The recruiting calendar has now entered a dead period. For the month of August, the only contact permitted is text messaging with the 2023 class.
But recruiting, in whatever form, continues.
“You know, we're not there yet,” Gundy said. “There's still some other stuff that that we still have to finish. You know, you still got to get ‘em to signing day.”
“Just because they commit doesn't mean everything's over,” Venables said. “For us, you’ve got to continue to recruit them like they're not committed, because you don't sign until December. But you feel really good about where we're at right now.”
Whatever happens between now and December, it’s been huge for Venables and his first-year staff to establish the identity of the program and what they want it to look like. That’s why June and July were so huge for Oklahoma — because they did exactly that, thanks to Venables’ “narrow focus.”
“I think it’s important for any program,” Chavis said. “But especially for us.”
“Oh yeah,” said Gundy. “You want to put your foot down and let people know that ‘Hey, this is who we are.’ And, you know, we see the direction, we know the direction that we're going into. We see that. We know the vision and, you know, it's like that locomotive that's going down on that train track. I mean, we're going. You can either get on or you stand on the side and you can watch us — but we're heading in that direction.”
