Oklahoma
Deacon Schmitt’s Spring Could Signal a Stronger Offensive Line for Oklahoma
Sooners on SI will spotlight ten players who need a big spring to solidify their place on the depth chart, improve and/or help Oklahoma build off its 2025 College Football Playoff momentum. Each day, we’ll break down one player’s background, progress, and what’s on the line as Brent Venables’ team takes shape during spring football.
Last season, Oklahoma was sort of forced into playing freshman tackle Michael Fasusi. His talent, coupled with the Sooners’ lack of established returning starters — who were healthy — allowed for the right situation for the young Fasusi to see the field as a starter.
Fasusi was later joined by fellow true freshman guard Ryan Fodje on the offensive line partially due to his budding talent but also injuries that forced Bill Bedenbaugh to shuffle guys around.
As the season wore on, Fasusi established himself as a solid starter while Fodje was inconsistent as he switched from guard to tackle and back to guard. Redshirt freshman Eddy Pierre-Louis came in during the second half of the season to establish a foundation for the future.
All to say, while OU feels significantly better about its offensive line situation heading into 2026, there’s still room for young players to establish themselves this spring — like incoming true freshman Deacon Schmitt.
The 6-5, 315-pound guard from Windsor, CO, has the physical tools you’d want in a player with a goal to see the field early. As an early enrollee, he will have the advantage of working under new strength and conditioning coach James Dobson to get physically ready to establish himself in the spring.
Schmitt was one of two offensive linemen (Noah Best being the other) to sign with the Sooners last December for the class of 2026. Per On3, Schmitt earned a high-4-star rating along with being a top-20 player at his position in the country. Both freshmen will have real chances to climb the two-deep this spring, but Schmitt’s physical tools give him the edge over Best.
More Oklahoma Sooners
Oklahoma lost Febechi Nwaiwu and Derek Simmons to graduation following 2025.
Depth pieces like Jacob Sexton (Oklahoma State), Luke Baklenko (Arizona State), Logan Howland (Virginia Tech), Jake Taylor (Iowa State), and Isaiah Autry-Dent (Mississippi State) all transferred out of the program.
General manager Jim Nagy grabbed former Arkansas starting right tackle E’Marrion Harris — who has the upper hand to take over for Simmons on the right side — as well as Caleb Nitta from Western Kentucky and Peyton Joseph of Georgia Tech. The latter two players appear to be depth or developmental additions.
If Schmitt can ascend up the depth chart thanks to a strong spring, it would be a welcome addition to a top-heavy offensive line unit.
While Fodje impressed at right guard and right tackle for a freshman, the young lineman still has a ways to go. Competition would only allow for a better product if Schmitt can push this spring.
Schmitt’s trajectory is not to supplant anyone on the offensive line, but merely to develop quickly to help rebuild Oklahoma’s offensive line back to its pre-2020 greatness.
OU hit it out of the park with their freshman offensive line additions last season. It hastened the pace of Bedenbaugh’s line, returning to the days of Creed Humphrey and Orlando Brown. But they’re not quite yet at the summit. They’ll need another season of young players like Schmitt thrusting themselves into the two-deep so the Sooners aren’t an ankle roll away from disaster.
Their end is inevitable, but the Los Angeles Lakers (0-3) can stave off elimination when they host the Oklahoma City Thunder for Game 4 of the 2026 Western Conference Semifinals.
At BetMGM, Oklahoma City opened as -500 on the moneyline (Los Angeles at +375) and -10.5 favorites. However, the flood of pro-Thunder money has steamed them up to -11.5 favorites at the time of writing.
THE REFS IN THE OKC-LA SERIES WERE SO BAD, THE LAKERS HAD TO HAVE A POSTGAME MEETING WITH THEM
Oklahoma City Thunder’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander gets a layup vs. the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 2 of the 2026 Western Conference Semifinals at Paycom Center. (Alonzo Adams-Imagn Images)
OKC has won every game this series by 18+ points and has a seven-game winning streak over LA. That’s despite reigning NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander not putting up his typical crazy numbers.
Shai is scoring only 21.0 points per game in this series, slightly behind Thunder big man Chet Holmgren’s 21.3 PPG average, which leads the team.
LeBron James Is Trying To Avoid Another Sweep
LeBron James has only been swept three times in his career: the 2007 NBA Finals by the San Antonio Spurs, the 2018 NBA Finals by the Golden State Warriors and the 2023 Western Conference Finals by the Denver Nuggets.
FLOPPING IS RUINING THE NBA AND LEBRON SHOULD TAKE SOME BLAME FOR THAT
Maybe the sweep is a foregone conclusion, like the New York Knicks vs. Philadelphia 76ers series, but I’m counting on the Lakers dying on their sword and going out with honor.
Los Angeles Lakers All-Star LeBron James shoots over the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 3 of the second round of the 2026 NBA Playoffs at Crypto.com Arena. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images)
Los Angeles held a first-half lead in Games 2 and 3 and still lost by 18 and 23 points, respectively. Granted, perhaps that’s just OKC playing with its food more than anything the Lakers are doing right.
Still, it’s something for L.A. to build on.
Lakers Need Oklahoma City’s Role Players To Cool Off
The Lakers are hitting 39.3% of their 3-pointers in this series. Unfortunately for them, the Thunder are shooting 42.3% from behind the arc.
But Oklahoma City’s role players are doing most of the damage from deep. Thunder guards Jared McCain, Cason Wallace and Isaiah Joe, along with big man Jaylin Williams, are a combined 25 for 41 from 3-point range, good for a ridiculous 61.0%.
The Oklahoma City Thunder bench reacts after making a 3-pointer vs. the Los Angeles Lakers in the second round of the 2026 NBA Playoffs at Crypto.com Arena. (Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images)
That’s not sustainable.
If these randoms hit fewer shots in Game 4, the Lakers can cover the spread.
Betting Market Is Overwhelmingly On OKC
Finally, 95% of the money at BetMGM is on Oklahoma City as of Monday morning, according to John Ewing.
While I’m not someone who bows at the altar of betting splits, 95% of people don’t beat the sportsbooks. We all know this.
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I know that’s simple logic, but if you blindly fade teams this popular in the betting market, you’ll probably have a positive return on investment.
Best Bet: Los Angeles Lakers +11.5
_____________________________
Follow me on X @Geoffery-Clark, and check out my OutKick Bets Podcast for more betting content and random rants.
Oklahoma
Tulsa Race Massacre reparations is soul-redeeming work for the US, Oklahoma civil rights lawyer says
NEW YORK (AP) — It wasn’t until his junior year of college that civil rights attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons learned about a devastating massacre that took place in his hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma.
His African American studies professor lectured about what is known today as the Tulsa Race Massacre — the days in 1921 when white mobs carried out a scorched-earth campaign against an outnumbered Black militia protecting the fabled Black Wall Street, a prosperous all-Black community.
“I actually told a teacher, ‘I’m from Tulsa. That’s not true,’” Solomon-Simmons recalled. “And of course, I was wrong.”
That day planted a seed for the then-aspiring attorney, who went on to lead a reparations campaign for the living survivors of the massacre and their descendants. Nearly 105 years later, no one has been compensated for what they lost, and none of the culprits have been held accountable.
That fight for reparations is the subject of Solomon-Simmons’ first book, “Redeem a Nation: The Century-Long Battle to Restore the Soul of America,” which is intended as a blueprint for justice in historic atrocities that Black Americans endured but never received reparations for. The book hits shelves Tuesday.
After the massacre, more than 35 city blocks of the neighborhood known as Greenwood were leveled in fires, an estimated 191 businesses were destroyed, and roughly 11,000 Black residents were displaced. The state of Oklahoma declared the death toll to be only 36 people, although many historians and experts who have studied the event put the death toll between 75 and 300.
Greenwood, founded in 1906, had been a bustling city within a city, with Black-owned grocery stores, soda fountains, cafés, barbershops, a movie theater, music venues, cigar and billiard parlors, tailors and dry cleaners, rooming houses and rental properties.
“If you can ignore Greenwood, which was the beacon of Black prosperity and Black progress in the history of this country, then you can ignore Black people in general,” Solomon-Simmons recently told The Associated Press. “I think that’s why people around the nation are so focused on the work that we’re doing, because they understand what it means to all of Black America.”
Solomon-Simmons’s book comes just months before the United States will mark 250 years since its founding in 1776. That was 89 years before the institution of chattel slavery — meaning an enslaved person was held as legal property of another — was abolished. The civil rights attorney questions the idea that Americans can truly celebrate the country’s accomplishments when it has yet to pay reparations, which historians say informs modern day disparities in wealth between Black and white people.
“We cannot talk about what America has been and will be, without making sure that these issues are discussed and we get reparatory justice for both” slavery and the Tulsa massacre, Solomon-Simmons said.
‘America has never had a soul’
In 343 pages, Solomon-Simmons does more than recite the history of the massacre or make a legal thriller out of his reparations campaign. For him, securing justice for the survivors and descendants of the massacre is also about healing a nation whose earliest promises of equality for all rang hollow.
“When I speak of repairing America’s soul, I do not mean restoring something that was once whole,” Solomon-Simmons writes in the book. “America has never had a soul. … There was no moral center to recover.”
He suggests that America’s soul cannot be repaired if it is forced to choose between rebuilding the nation or repairing Black America. They must do both, he says.
“The struggle for justice in Greenwood is not about returning to a mythical past. It is about proving whether America can build a soul at all through truth, through justice, through repair.”
Reparations for slavery and other historical racial injustices has been debated in the U.S. since Reconstruction, through the Civil Rights Movement and for much of the 21st century. Jennifer L. Morgan, a professor of history at New York University, said such debates are complicated by the question of exactly who pays the reparations and exactly who receives the payment.
“I don’t think that we’re talking about individuals who owe anybody else reparations. I think we’re talking about states, about institutions, about the nation,” Morgan said. “America is still grappling with reparations because America is still grappling at the legacy of slavery, racial discrimination, Jim Crow, and violent exclusion of Black people from the body politic.”
Some opponents of reparations argue there are no living culprits or direct victims of enslavement, much less people with verifiable claims of harm that can be presented in a court of law.
Solomon-Simmons disagrees.
“We know who did the massacre — the perpetrators are still living in Tulsa,” he said referring to the city and the chamber of commerce, which plaintiffs alleged had a hand in obstructing Greenwood’s recovery.
There is one remaining massacre survivor involved in the reparations lawsuit: 111-year-old Lessie Benningfield Randle.
“If we cannot get her reparations while she’s alive, for the massacre, it’s gonna make it that much harder for us to get reparations for enslavement, Jim Crow, redlining and all those things that we are owed,” Solomon-Simmons said.
Fight for Tulsa reparations continues
In the book, Solomon-Simmons reflects on what committed him to the reparations fight.
While in law school, he was introduced to high profile civil rights attorneys working for the Reparations Coordinating Committee – the late Harvard Professor Charles Ogletree Jr., who mentored Barack and Michelle Obama; and the late Johnnie Cochran, who is widely known for defending O.J. Simpson during his trial for murder of his ex-wife. Solomon-Simmons became a law clerk for the committee.
After witnessing Ogletree argue a Tulsa reparations case in federal court in 2004, Solomon-Simmons said the practice of law stopped being just a credential for speaking, writing, or teaching. It became a calling.
In 2020, Solomon-Simmons led a lawsuit on behalf of 11 plaintiffs, including the last three known living survivors of the massacre, against the City of Tulsa and seven defendants. The suit was the first of its kind in state court and the first to get far enough to see a judge. In 2024, the Oklahoma Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuit. In the final days of the Biden administration, the Justice Department released a report saying it had determined there is no longer an avenue for criminal prosecution over the massacre.
But the fight continues, Solomon-Simmons says, for cash payment to Randle and other descendants, as well as the return of land stolen after the massacre and during a period of urban renewal in Tulsa.
In 2025, the city’s first Black mayor, Monroe Nichols, endorsed a broad proposal dubbed Project Greenwood, which calls for financially compensating Randle, funding a scholarship program for descendants of victims, and designating June 1 as Tulsa Race Massacre Observance Day.
Solomon-Simmons also runs the nonprofit Justice for Greenwood, which he founded a year before the community marked the centennial of the massacre in 2021.
“One thing I’ve learned from this work, and as a lawyer in general, is that people want justice,” he said. “People want reparations, but people (also) want acknowledgment. They want to be seen. They want people to understand that something happened to them and their family, and they want an apology.”
___
Aaron Morrison is the race and ethnicity news editor at AP.
Earlier this year, Sooners On SI broke down Oklahoma’s opponents in 2026. With spring football in the rearview window, how do the Sooners’ foes look heading into the summer following their March/April practices? We continue with the Ole MIss Rebels.
As Oklahoma journeys deeper into November, the talent level keeps rising.
While Oklahoma worked to secure a pivotal player’s return for one final season, Ole Miss had already pulled off one of the offseason’s most impactful moves — locking in an extra year of eligibility for quarterback Trinidad Chambliss.
Exit Lane Kiffin, enter Pete Golding. Well, that already happened before the College Football Playoff, but now the country waits to see if Golding will be able to continue his impressive run as a head coach into an offseason.
How did spring treat the Rebels? Even if Ole Miss appears strong on paper. OU does get the benefit of hosting the Rebels for a second straight season once November arrives.
The Injury Front
Good news and bad news for Ole Miss during spring ball: The good is that no players will be dealing with injuries deep into the summer.
The bad news was that an “injury bug” plagued the offensive line, causing the defensive-minded coach to scale back on full-contact drills and practice during the spring to avoid further injury.
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While injuries weren’t a large concern for Ole Miss this spring, they have to deal with replacing top-end talent — mostly on defense. Talents like edge rusher Princewill Umanmielen, who transferred to LSU to follow Kiffin.
Ole Miss Strength
Chambliss ranks among the best quarterbacks in the country, and the way he rises to the occasion in Ole Miss’ biggest games makes the Rebels dangerous every time he takes the field.
Even without Kiffin, Ole Miss was busy during the transfer portal in trying to replenish a great deal of skill talent that either exited the program or graduated.
Post-Spring Oklahoma Opponent Breakdowns
With Kewan Lacy in the backfield and tight ends Dae’Quan Wright and Luke Hasz, the Rebels’ offense will no doubt be one of the tougher units Oklahoma will face.
If Golding is able to maintain his impressive control of the program he showcased during last season’s College Football Playoff, the offense should still be one of the best in the country.
The Final Verdict
Ole Miss has had Oklahoma’s number in the Sooners’ first two years in the SEC. Could a fortitous schedule factor — a second game in Norman in back-to-back years — finally get Oklahoma over the Rebels?
No matter the feelings prior to the game, Ole Miss may be one of the tougher games on the schedule for OU — including the first six-week crucible. Chambliss has proven to be that good, and despite the defensive departures, Ole Miss has proven to reload talent quickly.
Depending on Oklahoma’s record at the time of the game, their match with the Rebels could prove to pivotal for either team’s playoff chances. Last season for OU, this was the road game against Alabama.
OU will have the talent to combat Ole Miss, but the Rebels will have a sure-fire Heisman contender under center.
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