Caleb Williams Blog: No. 1 QB, Family Leading #SoonerSummit Weekend at Oklahoma
Caleb Williams is the top quarterback prospect in the 2021 class with scholarship offers from elite programs coast to coast before committing to Oklahoma on July 4. He has agreed to give Sports Illustrated exclusive access into his world by chronicling everything from his experience as a high profile recruit to his home life and preparation for his senior season. This is 'All on the Line.'
Hey everybody, welcome back to another week of Caleb Williams: All On the Line Blog.
Last week, I got in the pool and had an awesome workout. It felt good to get back in the water. Kinda my second home. I'm a fish. I threw with NFL/XFL receiver, Cam Phillips. I came up the ranks under Cam and his crew, watching how they work and stuff. I’ve known him forever. He went to Dematha, he was a great player at Dematha, he went to Virginia Tech, got drafted. He's played in the NFL and lit it up in the XFL last season. My session with him went well. I might have missed two passes. So it went well.
He’s always been a really smooth route runner. I haven’t thrown with anybody like at that level in a while. The game speed is on another level, which was a good challenge to adapt to. I’ll throw again with him this week when I get back from Sooner Summit.
How Sooner Summit came about was that I was preparing to go down to Oklahoma to visit Norman and for my family and I to look at houses there. We are putting down roots, so to speak. At first it was just gonna be us, and I floated the idea by my dad about inviting the recruits and the commits to come and join us. Obviously, we would do only things we can with the Corona, with masks and hand sanitizer and all that, try and get some of the 4- and 5-star guys that are committed and not committed to try and come visit the campus and get to know the city a little.
There’s not gonna be coaches and things like that because it's an NCAA dead period. They can’t talk to us. They can’t be around us. They can’t really help us with anything like that. This is all us recruits coming together under a common agenda.
So basically, the players and I are the ringleaders of this whole thing with our parents' help setting it up to getting the guys to come, to when we get there making sure everything goes smoothly. We will have a good time enjoying each other. Hopefully that helps the guys that are already committed stay committed, and have a good time at their soon-to-be-home for the next couple years, and for the guys that aren’t committed to be committed, or to commit. And that can be their home for the next 3-4 years.
That’s really the ultimate goal, because you want to have a really good class. The better the class is, the better the opportunity that we’ll have to go win a national championship, and obviously that’s the goal. The goal is to get to college and have a good career and go to the next level. I mean, I want to win championships. I want to get guys around me in my class that want to do the same. Hopefully that’s what this Sooner Summit does, it helps the guys understand the mentality that we all have, and to build the brotherhood. Also, it helps them see the dream, because you’ve always got to dream big. So hopefully this helps them see the dream and helps them understand what we’re trying to do at OU for these next couple years.
We’ve got a bunch of good recruits coming in, a bunch of good guys overall coming. Good families. I’ll be honest, I can’t wait to meet some of the people that I haven’t met. Most of these recruits I haven’t met. Most of these families I haven’t met. So I’m excited to be there, see them, bring some energy, have a smile on my face with all the guys than I would normally with our unofficials and our officials, but since we can’t, it’s a really good time to kind of connect with those people that I would normally be able to see without the pandemic.
My mom is going down two days earlier than us. Mom is going down on Tuesday to look at some houses and apartments, things like that. This is a family thing. Family moment, basically, and this is a business decision. They want to be there, they want to be with me, they want to be around me, make sure I’m taking all the right steps. So them getting an apartment or a house is kind of one of those steps. They’re not really gonna be around, but if I ever need them, they’ll be there.
And I’ll be able to have the linemen over there, get in the pool, hop on the game, play games, get on the grill and things like that, cook and just have a good time with the guys whenever we want, just get away from campus. But basically, a business decision, a family decision.
And also kind of cool because I can, like I said, just invite the guys over and have a good time, be around them more, spend some quality time with the guys, kind of just build … a brotherhood, build a bond and a trust between the other recruits that are coming to this, the Sooner Summit. It’s the same thing I would do for the guys that are already there and the guys that are coming there with me and after me.
So my Mom is going out Tuesday, my dad and I, we’re leaving Thursday. We’re gonna be there for four days or so. Not everybody is gonna be there the whole time. Some of the guys are coming on Thursday, the same time we are, and then some guys are coming Friday and some guys are coming Saturday.
We'll have some pictures through the week. Dinner with everybody Saturday night, there's gonna be some pretty epic pictures that night. It's been a lot of parents getting tether on the phone talking, everybody's excited to come, so it's kind of a cool thing. Because you don't want to send your kids to a place you've never seen before.
We're gonna just have fun.
Some of these events where you go, unofficials or officials, are really, like, uptight because the coaches want to impress and every minute is programmed. I’m not a coach. I’m an 18-year-old kid, and I know what the kids go through because I'm going through it. I’m their age. So this isn’t gonna be some unofficial or official with coaches and the recruiters and analysts and all these people around us. It’s gonna be Caleb and his family being around the other guys and their families and having a good time, and that’s about it. Obviously it’s gonna be a little organized, because you need to be a little bit organized with all those people. You kind of need to have some idea of what you’re going to want to do. But other than that, it’s gonna be very laid back and flexible.
If some guys want to do different stuff, we'll do that. But we've got a basic, kind of open agenda with ideas and people can participate or not. We're open and flexible. Just want to have a good time. We're probably gonna through the ball around a little bit with some of the guys. We're football guys, so we're going to have a little bit of football fun, too.
Can't wait to see the players, the parents. To the people that read this, in the comments and things like that, let me know where we should eat. Normally I just eat Cane's but I wanna eat at some places I don't know about. If you see us there, don't hesitate to show some love. It's all love over here.
Can't wait! Excited to get out there again.
Signing off, Caleb Williams: All on the Line. Make sure you stay safe, stay healthy, stay positive and make sure you wash your hands.
#SoonerSummit
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