Oklahoma State Overachieving in Transfer Portal Recruiting
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The 2024 Oklahoma State Cowboy football season was one for the record books, just not the record fans of Pokes football want to see. It was a tough season not only for the Cowboys but also for the faithful of the OSU orange, who kept coming back every Saturday despite a winless Big 12 season.
The rebuild was one for the ages, with only Mike Gundy remaining on the staff. Players who Cowboy Nation had grown to love were off to graduation, the NFL and the transfer portal.
With a new coaching staff in place and coming off of a 3-9 season, all the pieces were in place for the Cowboys staff to struggle on the recruiting road. They were predicted early on in recruiting to finish with the 60th-best recruiting class and near the bottom of the Big 12 Conference.
With a sizeable portion of the transfer portal in the books, the Cowboys may be one of the biggest surprises in transfer portal recruiting. With the recent transfer portal team rankings dropping on Thursday, the Cowboys found themselves with the 31st-ranked transfer portal class in all of football.
The Big 12 numbers are even more impressive for the Pokes. Entering the season, the Cowboys were ranked at the bottom of the Big 12 in recruiting, and as of Thursday, their transfer portal class ranks seventh in the Conference.
The Cowboys are tied with Arizona and UCF with 23 transfer portal commitments. The 23 commits rank first in the Big 12 Conference, and their average commitment player ranking is 85.42.
The Cowboys' highest-rated transfer portal football players so far in the cycle are former UTEP edge rusher Kyran Duhon and former Auburn athlete Sam Jackson V who both are rated at 89.0. Former LSU cornerback JK Johnson may be one of the biggest steals of the transfer portal cycle. He was a near five-start athlete out of high school who was predicted to go in the first three rounds of the NFL draft. A star may be born in the defensive secondary in 2025 for the Cowboys.
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Taylor Skieens has been an avid sports journalist with the McCurtain Gazette in Idabel, Oklahoma for seven years. He holds the title of Sports Editor for one of the oldest remaining print publications in the state of Oklahoma. Taylor grew up in the small lumber town of Wright City Oklahoma where he played baseball and basketball for the Lumberjax.