How much is playing quarterback at the University of Oklahoma worth to Kyler Murray? That’s a question that will be burning in the minds of OU fans for the next two months as the two-sport star wraps up the baseball season and heads towards the MLB Draft.
Here’s the deal. Murray is just a few months away from being a millionaire. Murray is batting .279 for the Sooners this season with five home runs and 28 RBIs. He’s done more than enough to turn the heads of scouts and when you add his speed as a factor he becomes the type of prospect that you don’t want to miss out on.
Conversation of Keith Law’s top 50 MLB draft prospects dominated the local airways in Oklahoma City on Thursday because the ESPN Insider has Murray ranked No. 36. That range would make him an early second round pick and earn him a signing bonus or $1.5 – 2.0 million dollars. Does a guy come back and play football after that? Hence the question at the top of this post.
“Murray is slated to start at quarterback this fall for the Sooners, but if he’s finally ready to play baseball full time, his plus-plus speed and contact-oriented swing would make him a first-round pick — especially since he’s played fairly well since moving into the Sooners’ lineup in the third weekend of the spring,” Law wrote.
Still though, the allure of playing quarterback for the Sooners has to be strong. That’s not in question here at all. What is in question is just how strong is it, especially for a guy who’s future is ultimately destined to the diamond rather than the gridiron?
In Lincoln Riley’s own words, the quarterback competition between Murray and Austin Kendall is neck-and-neck. Had Murray outplayed Kendall this spring to the point where he was the clear front-runner then perhaps we have a different angle to this debate. We don’t though, and there lies the rub in it all. At the risk of dropping too many questions in one article, do you turn down millions to compete for the starting job? That’s a lot different than turning down mad money for a guaranteed spot.
There’s the possibility that he could do both though. He could get drafted, go off to play summer ball, and then return to Oklahoma in August for football. That’s a real possibility but spending the summer playing baseball can’t help him focus on the things he needs to do in order to win the starting quarterback job. Kendall is going to be working all day, every day, to develop not only his skills on the field but also his rapport with the team and receivers. My opinion is that playing baseball through the summer would put Murray significantly behind in the competition.
As for Murray himself, he said he wasn’t worried about it when asked about the MLB Draft by a pool of reporters. Give him two more months and he’ll have a couple million reasons to worry about it.
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