ChampU BBQ is a heavy hitting event and an important Sooner recruiting lever

This past weekend, Oklahoma football hosted the most important recruiting activity of the year. Every year the Sooners host the ChampU BBQ, a huge event that brings out several dozen of the Sooners and the nation’s top recruits.

While college football recruiting is a year-round activity and sometimes more, the real push for Oklahoma recruiting builds in late June and into late July. Then the commitments of the current recruitment cycle start to fall in the commitment column more often.

Several of OU’s top 2024 targets were in attendance at the ChampU BBQ over the weekend, and Brent Venables and the Sooner coaching staff are hopeful the event will close sales on some of the top prospects OU has been actively recruiting.

The first Domino last weekend’s action is expected to go down on Tuesday night when four-star LB James Nesta is expected to announce his verbal commitment, which is expected to be OU.

Arguably the biggest contributor to OU’s weekend recruiting event was a five-star DT David Stone, a consensus top-10 recruit from Oklahoma, but not from IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida. The Sooners are believed to be in the lead to land Stone, who is also being pursued by Michigan State and several other big schools. Venables is working hard to bolster the Sooner defense at the point of attack.

Another five-star DT was also present at the weekend, Dominick McKinley, Lafayette, Louisiana. And there was a five-star DE prospect on campus a week before that Williams Nwaneri. out of the Kansas City area. Oklahoma should be able to land at least one of these highly touted DL prospects, but if they land two or even all three, it would be a major coup and go a long way toward assembling an elite Brent Venables-type defense.

OU coaches and recruiting staff were also believed to have made progress with RB during ChampU’s BBQ weekend. Caden Durham and Xavier Robinson and S Mykel Patterson-McDonald. All are 4-star prospects, and everyone’s crystal ball predictions favor the Sooners. Robinson and Patterson-McDonald are Oklahoma products; Durham is out of Duncanville, Texas.

Another RB targeted by the Sooners who attended the ChampU BBQ is a four-star prospect Taylor Tatum. Until recently, Tatum was trending toward Oklahoma, but Lincoln Riley and USC have been pushing Tatum all over the field in recent weeks, and that might be enough to entice the Longview, Texas recruit, who is ranked as the No. 1 RB. class according to 247Sports. However, the Sooners may have something that might tip the scales in that Tatum has expressed interest in playing baseball as well (a la Kyler Murray) and OU baseball coach Skip Johnson has spoken to him about it.

Oklahoma 2024 TE target About that Mitchell was also there on the weekend. The Southern California native is a close friend of the 2024 OU QB commit Michael Hawkinswhich the Sooners hope will work in their favor.

This is just a small representation of the nearly 30 recruits who were in Norman for the ChampU BBQ weekend. Most of the recruits in attendance are also being touted by other major college suitors, but Venables strongly believes that if and when they are ready to commit to Oklahoma, they will have visited all the schools they are considering. Because of this approach, it may take some time for the Sooners to flesh out their 2024 class. However, these are some of the big names to keep an eye on over the next six weeks and into the fall.

The Sooners earned seven commitments a year ago from prospects who attended the 2022 ChampU BBQ, which turned out to be the fourth-best class nationally, according to both ESPN and 247Sports.

Oklahoma has quite a bit of catching up to do if they’re going to bring in another top-10 class in 2024. The Sooners are currently ranked No. 53 in the 247Sports 2024 class rankings with six commitments.