Oklahoma Sooners Football Recruiting: Five-star DL David Stone commits to Oklahoma

David Stone has been a name familiar to Oklahoma Sooners fans for years, and after dozens of recruiting visits and plenty of strong charges from recruiting competitors, the five-star defensive lineman has verbally committed to OU.

Stone, a native of Oklahoma City who currently attends IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., is the type of commitment that this program and fan base have been awaiting for longer than they would have liked. The Sooners have signed some five-star recruits in recent years (including three in the 2023 cycle), but Stone will (hopefully) be the highest-profile interior DL prospect to come to Norman since Gerald McCoy is 2006. Needless to say, he’s the type of piece OU and Brent Venables need in order to compete in the SEC in 2024 and beyond, and hopefully this will mark the beginning of a positive trend.

While Stone has seemed destined for Norman for quite some time, his recruiting saga has not been without storylines. Mel Tucker and the Michigan State Spartans have made things interesting over the past year, and the Miami Hurricanes have made a recent push. The latter had become a concern in recent weeks, but familiarity and relationships appear to have prevailed.

While we’re on this topic, Todd Bates deserves a cold beer tonight. With the Sooners coming up short in the recruitment for David Hicks and Williams Nwaneri in back-to-back cycles, this staff needed a big W. They simply couldn’t afford to miss out on a prospect of this caliber who hails from their own backyard. Thankfully, Bates is starting to do what was expected of him when he came over from Clemson — attract big-name defensive lineman to Oklahoma once again.