Oklahoma Sooners

Inspired by Florida's "#ComePlayWRFortheJoker" campaign, our recruiting writers looked at other ways schools can sell themselves on the trail. Here's a look at recruiting pitches for the Big 12:

Baylor Bears
What they’re selling: The new 45,000-seat, $250-million on-campus stadium that will open in 2014. Recruiting is an arms race, and players like fancy stadiums and locker rooms, and Baylor’s upgrade puts them finally on the same level playing field as everybody else in the Big 12.
What they're missing: Help on defense -- specifically at defensive line and defensive back.

Iowa State Cyclones
What they’re selling: Paul Rhoads. He grew up miles from the campus and has helped turn around Iowa State with a physical and fundamentally sound style of football.
What they're missing: A true home-run threat at receiver.

Kansas Jayhawks
What they’re selling: Charlie Weis. He’s taken risks (juco infusion), repaired relationships with area high school coaches and widened KU’s recruiting pool.
What they're missing: Wins. When you’ve won only one conference game in three years, a little bit of everything is missing.

Kansas State Wildcats
What they’re selling: Bill Synder. The plan has worked for years in Manhattan. K-State doesn’t care how many stars a player has attached to his name, a player only earns an offer from K-State unless Snyder personally signs off on it after a lengthy review. It’s a plan that produced a No. 1 BCS ranking and a Big 12 championship in 2012.
What’s missing: I’ve been told by coaches for years that the most difficult position to recruit is defensive tackle. That’s why you often see even average defensive tackles rack up double-digit offers, and finding good depth at defensive tackle has been very difficult to do at K-State.

Oklahoma Sooners
What they’re selling: Oklahoma is proud of its football tradition, and few schools can match the Sooners’ track record for success, facilities and ability to prepare you for the next level.
What they're missing: A renewed focus on evaluating players. It’s what differentiated Bob Stoops’ staff when they started, and it’s how they found players like Sam Bradford, Josh Heupel, Juaquin Iglesias and Donald Stephenson. All at the time were considered to be three-star recruits but wound up being impact players for the Sooners.

Oklahoma State Cowboys
What they’re selling: Their ability to evaluate and develop offensive talent.
What they're missing: Elite players in the Lone Star State. With the best facilities in the conference, it might be just enough to get kids to visit.

Texas Longhorns
What they’re selling: Few in the nation can offer up the type of atmosphere, fan base, tradition and total student-athlete package like Texas can.
What they're missing: A true a difference-maker at quarterback. The last two Heisman Trophy winners have come from Texas high schools, and the Longhorns didn’t recruit one heavily and recruited the other as an athlete.

TCU Horned Frogs
What they’re selling: The Horned Frogs recruit to their style of smash-mouth play on both sides of the ball and don’t care how many stars a recruit has. It hurts them some in the recruiting rankings, but it helps them win a lot of ball games.
What they're missing: BCS conference depth. Heading into their second season in the Big 12 after a 7-6 season, the biggest thing the Horned Frogs need to do is to build the roster to be able to compete year in and year out in the BCS conference.

Texas Tech Red Raiders
What they’re selling: The Red Raiders went through a transition that brought Kliff Kingsbury to Lubbock, and the early reception has been nothing short of positive.
What they're missing: The Red Raiders have never had issues putting up points on people, but under Tommy Tuberville and Mike Leach there was little defense being played.

West Virginia Mountaineers
What they’re selling: WVU is a force in the Atlantic region, can recruit well in Pennsylvania and is arguably one of the best schools at identifying offensive talent in the JC ranks.
What they're missing: The 2014 class will have to be all about rebuilding in Morgantown, as the needs are mounting while several impact players have moved on.

The NFL draft is done, and you can find some raw data at the bottom of this post, but here are a few thoughts:

• You can see our thoughts on the first round here, so today, we'll focus on the rest of the draft.

• What a nighmare spot for Geno Smith to land after a rough drop out of the first round. Sure, he might be able to earn some early playing time for the Jets, and it's not hard to see him beating out a couple of first-round picks in Mark Sanchez and Tim Tebow, but the Jets are a complete zoo with six quarterbacks on the roster, and Chaz Schilens (what??) and former TCU receiver Jeremy Kerley as their top targets in the passing game. Good grief. Smith won't be pressured to play early, but it's hard to imagine him walking into a worse situation as a rookie quarterback, with no one to really learn from, tons of distractions and a zoo-like atmosphere on a Jets team that isn't expected to come anywhere close to the playoffs next season.
• On the flip side, how happy is Sam Bradford after this weekend? And how awesome is Tavon Austin and Stedman Bailey getting to continue playing together? The Rams just gained an entire state as a fan base. You'll be able to see plenty of St. Louis games in West Virginia, I'm betting. Don't be surprised if both of those guys are starters in Week 1 for a team badly in need of receivers after losing Danny Amendola to the Patriots. Austin is obviously more physically gifted, but Bailey has great hands and knows how to play the position. You don't catch 25 touchdown passes on accident.
• Meanwhile, great landing spot for Landry Jones, who stuck around Oklahoma an extra year, passing up a first-round grade from the advisory committee. He appeared to regress this year, falling back to the fourth round. Walking into a place where he had to start early with few weapons would be a tough spot for any quarterback, even though Jones, with four years of starting experience, would be as ready as anyone. Instead, he'll sit behind Ben Roethlisberger, and considering how much Roethlisberger gets hit, don't be surprised if Jones is forced into starting duty once or twice next season. On a random note: Jones' landing spot is a little funny considering his wife played with Roethlisberger's little sister, Carlee, on the women's basketball team at Oklahoma.
• How perfect is Arthur Brown going to the Ravens? It's too bad he won't get to learn from Ray Lewis firsthand, but you can bet Lewis will have a hand in Brown's development. Brown is mean, fast and smart. That fits the Ravens perfectly.
• Jerry Jones loves him some Big 12 offensive skill talent. Dez Bryant blossomed this season, but the Dallas Cowboys went out and grabbed running back Joseph Randle and receiver Terrance Williams, the league's top rusher and receiver. I don't see Randle as a star in the NFL, but a solid contributor. Williams, though, will be fascinating to see in an offense thin at receiver behind Bryant. Miles Austin has had health issues, and Bryant has, too. Keep an eye out for Williams to make a splash in an offense that loves to throw it around. Randle will be backing up a familiar face in ex-Oklahoma running back DeMarco Murray.
• Great fit for Kenny Stills in New Orleans. The Saints have several aging receivers there to teach Stills a thing or two, but enough passes to get him some early experience. I'm betting on Stills as a 1,000-yard receiver in Year 3.
• Very cool reunion out in Arizona with Alex Okafor joining his old teammate, Sam Acho, on the Cardinals. It will be fun to see those guys on the field.
• Texas Tech was the only Big 12 team without a player drafted.
• Very shocked to see Oklahoma's Tony Jefferson and Iowa State's Jake Knott go undrafted. More so with Jefferson, who left school early and had great physical gifts. ESPN had him as the No. 5 safety in the draft at one point, but he wasn't among the more than 20 safeties drafted. Very odd. I have to wonder what's going on there. Has to be something other than his physical skills. He didn't necessarily show a lot of improvement throughout his career, but he was an All-Big 12 talent who made 100+ tackles this season. More on the Big 12's notable undrafted players later this morning.
• Not a good year for the Big 12 in the draft, with an all-time low 22 players drafted, but you also have to consider that it's just the second year that the league had just 10 teams. Texas A&M and Missouri had a combined eight draft picks, helping the 14-team SEC set an all-time record for draft picks by conference. By eight selections, of course. Generally, not a good trend for the Big 12. Most alarming: The SEC East and SEC West both had more draft picks than any other conference in college football. Good grief.

 

Here's the ranking of players drafted, by Big 12 team.

1. Oklahoma -- six players
2. West Virginia -- three players
2. Texas -- three players
2. Kansas State -- three players
5. Iowa State -- two players
5. TCU -- two players
7. Baylor -- one player
7. Kansas -- one player
7. Oklahoma State -- one player
10. Texas Tech -- zero players

Here are the conference rankings:


1. SEC -- 63 players
2. ACC -- 31 players
3. Pac-12 -- 28 players
4. Big 12 -- 22 players
4. Big Ten -- 22 players
6. Big East -- 18 players

Here is the full list of the 22 players from the Big 12 who were drafted:

#BlueChipBattles : RecruitingNation summoned its writers from around the country to outline the recruiting battles for the ESPN 150's top 10 prospects.

Plus, rank the battles in SportsNation.

#TopFBMixtapes: Athlete mixtapes are all the rage in this highlight-crazed era of sports. We reached out to our Twitter followers to find out which 2014 football stars had the best highlight reels on YouTube, then had our staff rank and comment on the top submissions.

Tom Luginbill writes : After talking to many coaches across the country and hearing their frustrations, here are their five biggest complaints about homemade highlight videos.

Oklahoma's defense made it through the second week of November and had given up more than 21 points just twice. The Sooners lost both games, but any good Big 12 offense can feel good about its chances if its defense gives up just 24 and 30 points, especially at home.

New defensive coordinator Mike Stoops looked like he'd made an impact, but after beating Iowa State in Ames, the streak of strong defensive play from the Sooners stopped. It survived 34 points from Baylor and big plays late from quarterback Landry Jones helped the Sooners beat West Virginia and rival Oklahoma State despite giving up 49 and 48 points, respectively.

Jones' heroics overshadowed the defensive struggles a bit, but there was no hiding from an embarrassing 41-13 blowout loss at the hand of ex-Big 12 rival Texas A&M, lowlighted by 229 rushing yards and 287 passing yards from Heisman winner Johnny Manziel, who also accounted for four touchdowns.

"You can’t give up that many yards and that many points and expect to win. We’ve got to find ways to be better against those kinds of teams. That’s what we’re concentrating on [this spring]," Stoops said. "A lot of teams you can go out there and it doesn’t matter what you play, you can beat a lot of teams, but when you go up against the top-level teams, you’ve got to come up with something a little different and variations and that’s where we came up short, those kinds of games."

There's no excusing the points, but how much of those struggles were the Sooners playing poorly, and how much of it was going head-to-head with four teams that ranked in the top 10 in total offense and scoring offense?

"Our plan was off against Tavon Austin, they kind of caught us with our pants down, and we didn’t have really an answer. Structrually, you’ve got to be better than that," Stoops said. "A&M, I think that was probably one of the hardest teams we’ve had to defend here ever, maybe."

Austin spent almost all his time at West Virginia as a receiver, but the Mountaineers moved him to running back against the Sooners. He promptly racked up a school-record 344 rushing yards and had 572 all-purpose yards, seven short of the NCAA record. Against the Aggies, the Sooners' pass rush went absent and the linebackers and secondary consistently lost contain on Manziel, who turned broken plays into big plays on countless occasions in the Aggies' romp.

"Those three teams average more than 550 yards a game so that’s their average. You’ve got to look at it, but certainly we want to have our expectations," Stoops said of the Aggies, Cowboys and Mountaineers. "It’s a little bit of us not being good enough schematically and position by positon. When you get stressed like that when you play good teams, you get stressed across the board, and we have to be better than we were a year ago, and that’s individually and schematically."