Upon arriving to Oklahoma City Monday night, from the Tallahassee Regional, Kyler Murray and his baseball teammates received word that he had been drafted 9th overall by the Oakland Athletics in the MLB draft. While Murray and his teammates were celebrating the announcement, OU football fans across the state were holding their breath waiting to hear from the star.
He has now spoken…
I made Murray confirm that he said, I will be playing football this year. Kyler’s response? “Confirmed.” Said he’s already discussed with the A's
— Jake Trotter (@Jake_Trotter) June 5, 2018
Murray’s plan is to play football for Oklahoma this fall and then join the Oakland organization after the season. By all accounts the Athletics were aware of this plan when they drafted him.
With that giant question mark out of the way we need to move on to the next one. Will Murray start for the Sooners this fall?
The answer is emphatically, 100%, yes! Absolutely he’s going to start. You don’t set aside nearly $5 million dollars for six months and risk injury if there isn’t already an agreement in place. The Athletics new when they drafted Murray that he was going to play football. Lincoln Riley knew that Murray was going to play football regardless of where he was drafted.
“I don’t really care a whole lot about what happens in the draft,” Riley said at the Sooner Caravan Tulsa event last week. “I’ve had good conversations with Kyler, his family and I fully expect him to be with us. I really don’t have any worries about it.”
Why made Riley so confident? It was the fact that he had an agreement with Murray and both were committed to keeping it.
“Everybody else has been a lot more worried about it than me,” Riley said. “I haven’t lost one night of sleep on it, so I apologize if anyone else has. I mean, I knew the deal getting into it. When he first decided to leave A&M we had very candid conversations with him and his family about it. They have lived up to their word — every part of it. I have no doubt they’ll continue to do so and I think they’d say the same about us.”
Here’s the thing, you don’t put being the #9 overall Major League Baseball pick on hold for an opportunity to compete for the starting quarterback job. You put it on hold to BE the starting quarterback.
The competition between Murray and Austin Kendall may have been neck-and-neck coming out of the spring, but it’s most certainly been resolved now.