Virtual Reality: Lincoln Riley, Sooners, 'Embrace What We Can Do' to Land Recruits in COVID-19
Anyone who has visited a college campus online knows the concept of making a “virtual visit” can be like taking a trip to the dentist.
Not anymore, apparently.
In the COVID-19 era, college football prospects are taking virtual visits instead of the real thing, and by all accounts, it’s been an enjoyable experience.
At Oklahoma, the experience so far has produced strictly positive results.
The Sooners have now landed three verbal commitments from players who haven’t really been to campus on official or unofficial visits.
“We’ve got a really good, creative staff,” OU coach Lincoln Riley said said on a Zoom call with media last week. “We’ve tried not to look at what can we not do, we’ve tried to embrace what we can do.”
Florida linebacker Danny Stutsman, Florida wide receiver Mario Williams and Texas linebacker Clayton Smith have all pledged to OU in the last two weeks after virtual visits. Of those three, only Smith (last July) has unofficially visited the OU campus, though Stutsman told The Oklahoman he and his dad drove through campus last winter but didn’t meet with the coaches.
Stutsman told the newspaper that his family is into muscle cars, and during his virtual visit, Lincoln Riley was pictured on Owen Field with several muscle cars.
“Really what stuck out from Oklahoma was that it was much more personalized,” Stutsman said. “You could actually tell that they made the videos just for me and it wasn't one that they just made for the whole class of 2021.”
“Quite frankly, the way the whole recruiting process went (with OU) was just a whole other level compared to all the rest of the schools,” Stutsman told the Orlando Sentinel. “You could really tell I was a player of high interest and definitely a player they wanted, and that’s really what stood out to me.”
Basically, Riley has taken a huge negative and turned it into a positive.
“It’s been fun. It has,” Riley said. “I enjoy the new challenges of it. I think our staff does. We’ve embraced the positives in it and there definitely have been some positives. Every college coach in the country has had more time to recruit the last couple months than they’ve probably ever had in their lives. You’ve been able to connect with a lot of players even though it hasn’t been in person. I could argue you could maybe connect with players more than you connected before just because of the amount of time, not only for you, but it’s just so rare these guys aren’t in school from 7:30 to 3:30, then practicing. Everybody’s home virtually all the time. So there’s really not a time that you can’t connect. So it’s been good.
“It’s been fun to get to know them on that level. You certainly hate to not have some in-person things, but there’s been some advantages, too. So, I’m proud of the way our staff’s handled it and excited about the direction it’s going.”
The NCAA last week extended its moratorium on in-person recruiting to June 30. So the virtual visits will continue. To judge by the results so far, that’s an advantage for Oklahoma — and recruiters at other schools are playing catch-up.
“Our whole staff’s been involved in it. We’ve worked hard on it, and I thought it’s gone good,” Riley said. “There’s a lot competitively within that right now that, I don’t want to get too in-depth for those reasons. But it’s been fun to connect that way.
“That’s what the rules are right now. I know they extended it to June 30th. I think we all believe that there’s a virtual certainty it’s gonna be extended beyond that, and so this is what we have to get used to right now.”
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