If you're not a recruitnik this time of year can be kind of confusing. There are two premiere prestigious all american games for high schoolers: the US Army All American Game, and the Under Armour Game. There are also numerous others varying in prestige but this week we'll talk about the Under Armour game since activities start tomorrow and end Sunday.
The UA game started back in 2008 as a way to give additional product exposure to the UA brand and piggyback off of ESPN's college football recruiting subsites.. UA apparel presented itself as counter culture to Nike, so the apparel and uniforms have a distinct style, flashy. The UA game quickly became established due to marketing and brand appeal attracting high level prospects
Check the Uniforms
So UA gets going and establishes itself and starts attracting a lot of top shelf talent,which is obviously good for both UA and ESPN. ESPN creates programming based around it's recruiting service and UA basically gets to market its products to thousands of college athletes.
Oklahoma has repeatedly had recruits in this game since its inception
2008
Jermie Calhoun
Daniel Franklin
Landry Jones
Josh Jarboe
2009
Justin Chaisson
Ronnell Lewis
Tom Wort
2010
Blake Bell
Corey Nelson
2011
Nathan Hughes
Jordan Phillips
Kendal Thompson
Brandon Williams
Danzel Williams
2012
Alex Ross
Sterling Shepard
2013
Keith Ford
2014
Justice Hansen
Wesley Horky
2015
Austin Seibert
As you can see, making this game is hard, performing up to that level in college is even harder., There's plenty of washouts on this list but players like Hansen, Ford and Kendal Thompson went on to have meaningful careers elsewhere..
The 2017 edition will feature OU four commits
TE: Grant Calcaterra
DB:Justin Broiles
DB:Tre Brown
OL: Tyrese Robinson
We have a few realistic targets in this game as well, and I'll focus on them alongside our current commits in tomorrows post:
Bare Bones Details
Practices will air on ESPNU on Thursday and Friday night.
The Game will air: Sunday, Jan1 @ 1pm est on ESPN
Useful linksto keep handy this week
