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Oklahoma DE Danny Okoye Lands Prestigious SEC Honor

The Tulsa product has been busy on the field as he climbed the depth chart this year, but he's also stayed industrious off the field as well.
John Hoover|
Oklahoma defensive end Danny Okoye
Oklahoma defensive end Danny Okoye | Carson Field, Sooners On SI

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Oklahoma Sooners

By OU Media Relations

Oklahoma defensive lineman Danny Okoye has been named to the 2025 SEC Football Community Service Team, the conference office announced Thursday.

The SEC names a Community Service Team for each of its 22 league-sponsored sports, highlighting an athlete from each school who gives back to the community through superior service efforts.

Okoye, a redshirt freshman from Tulsa, has consistently donated his time weekly this season, as well as during summers, over spring breaks and during bye weeks to help improve communities in the Oklahoma City/Norman area and others around the world. Since August, he has made weekly visits to volunteer at local elementary schools.

During the team's bye week this season, Okoye and teammates volunteered with the Beacon Project, a Norman-based charitable organization, to pack supplies for underprivileged kids in the community. He and teammates worked with 111 Project during the team’s 2024 open week to pack and deliver 200 50-pound bags of supplies for foster families in the Norman area, and he visited a local group home to mentor some of the youth living there. He has also helped paint and clean up the grounds of The Bridge Impact Center for youth and young adults in Oklahoma City on Martin Luther King Jr. Day for each of the last two years.

Okoye’s efforts have also extended abroad. During spring break 2024, Okoye traveled to South Africa to help improve communities in Cape Town and volunteer at Onthatile, a ministry for foster and adoptive children, helping clear debris for a new home to be built on the property. During spring break 2025, he traveled to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where he and teammates procured supplies to be donated to favelas (shantytowns) and interacted with local kids with a day at the beach and dinner.

On the field, Okoye has played in 12 career games and registered six tackles, 2.0 sacks and a pass breakup. He has recorded all of his career statistics in his 10 games this season.

2025 SEC Football Community Service Team

LT Overton (DL) – Alabama
Cam Ball (DL) – Arkansas
Keldric Faulk (DE) – Auburn
Knijeah Harris (OL) – Florida
CJ Allen (ILB) – Georgia
Hayden Dawahare (OLB) – Kentucky
Harold Perkins (LB) – LSU
Tyler Banks (LB) – Ole Miss
Jacoby Jackson (OL) – Mississippi State
Marquis Gracial (DT) – Missouri
Danny Okoye (DL) – Oklahoma
Nyck Harbor (WR) – South Carolina
Jalen McMurray (DB) – Tennessee
Michael Taaffe (DB) – Texas
Rueben Owens II (RB) – Texas A&M
Marlen Sewell (S) – Vanderbilt

Published
John E. Hoover
JOHN HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

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