The night of signing day, OU signee and five-star quarterback Jackson Arnold phoned his Denton Guyer High School teammate with a speech ready.
Arnold’s planned spiel was meant to reassure Peyton Bowen he wasn’t upset about him choosing another school.
However, Bowen cut him off, saying “Bro, I’m booming.”
“Stop playing,” Arnold responded.
Hours earlier, while filling out his national letter of intent, Peyton Bowen made what he called a mistake.
Bowen, a former five-star recruit, sent his NLI to the Oregon Ducks in Eugene, 1,999 miles from his home in Denton, Texas, but left out the “a.m.” in the time section of the document.
“I sent it in, we didn’t put the a.m. or p.m. on accident,” said Bowen, one of the most coveted players in this year’s signing class. “So I should be there right now honestly. I wrote the time, I didn’t write a.m. next to it and that was it.”
Somewhere between not fully completing the document and his teammate’s phone call, Bowen decided to flip to Oklahoma, which finished with the No. 4 recruiting class largely thanks to landing him.
Bowen’s announcement, one OU fans had been speculating would come for months, not only sent shockwaves through the college football recruiting world, but could be a launchpad for Brent Venables and the Sooners’ future success.
He was the No. 2 safety and No. 16 overall player nationally in the 2023 class, according to 247Sports’ Composite rankings. Bowen and Arnold, the high school teammates turned OU roommates, met the media along with 24 other new Sooners on Thursday.
Respect my Decision just want peace for me and my family Boomer Sooner ⭕️U!! pic.twitter.com/ERfET7lIyG
— Peyton Bowen (@PeytonBowen10) December 22, 2022
“Oklahoma has always felt like home to me,” Bowen wrote in his tweet on Dec. 22. “Reflecting, it seems as if I was always looking for a reason to branch out and break away from home.
“But my relationships with (Venables), (defensive tackles coach Todd Bates), (cornerbacks coach Jay Valai), (safeties coach Brandon Hall) and (defensive ends coach Miguel Chavis), along with my ties to friends and family locally ultimately led me back to where I always belonged.”
Peyton Bowen during a Denton Guyer High School football game.
‘He will make a lot of plays’
Just 27 hours earlier on signing day, Bowen, a 12-month Notre Dame commit, had surprised the nation initially by choosing Oregon over the Fighting Irish. Angry fans took to Twitter airing their frustration, and speculation followed about a potential NIL deal swaying the young recruit at the last minute.
His signing with the Sooners signifies recruits’ confidence in Venables’ ability to right the ship in Norman before Oklahoma heads to the SEC in 2024, and his power to land the players he feels he needs to have success.
“For the most part, it was a feeling,” Bowen said. “When I got down to the point where I had to sign the papers, (OU) was the only one I felt comfortable with signing. It was a hard moment … But ultimately I had to make the decision at the end of the day … The history of (Venables’) defense, how great it’s been over the years (was a factor).
“Just because they had a down year last year, they lost a lot of their guys, so I wasn't really too worried about it. And then the way I saw the defense play against Florida State, there were some times where they should have played better, but that's why I came here. I knew I could come in and make an impactful role early and just play football.”
Now, Bowen is in Norman, working out with 14 others from his class, impressing his coaches with his freaky athleticism and expecting to make an early impact on a team that finished 6-7 last season.
He also isn’t shying away from his desire to play immediately, an important factor in retaining players year to year in the age of the transfer portal.
Rodney Webb, Highland Park’s athletic director and Bowen’s former coach at Denton Guyer, said what sets him apart is his football instincts. An offensive-minded coach, Webb was always trying to experiment with Bowen on offense, but said his instincts were too good for him not to play defense.
He also said Bowen brings the ball skills of an elite receiver to the defensive backfield.
“I think what you'll see during his time at OU is that he will make a lot of plays,” Webb said. “He'll make a lot of game-changing type plays because of his instinct and his ball skill.”
Oklahoma returns sophomore starting safety Billy Bowman, contributors junior Key Lawrence and sophomore Damond Harmon, and brought in Texas Tech transfer Reggie Pearson.
Bowen shouldn’t have a problem seeing the field in 2023 as a true freshman behind Bowman. His talent alone makes him an intriguing option and Venables said he’s looking to play him at multiple positions.
“He's beyond his years in regards to football. It is easy for him,” Venables said. “The schemes are easy for him, he comes from a very good program where he's been coached incredibly well, with terminology, systems and diversity within schemes … He understands ball, he finds the football and he's got a tremendous skill set.”
To help early enrollees find their footing, the Sooners assign older teammates to each one to help shadow and mentor. Bowen’s is Bowman, who has quickly emerged as one of the leaders of Venables’ defense and finished with 61 tackles last season.
The two are similarly from Denton and are safeties with offensive backgrounds.
“I have a locker right next to him, he's a really good dude,” Bowen said. “He's quiet sometimes but he'll coach you … He’s helping me out so that's really good.”
Peyton Bowen during a Denton Guyer High School football game.
‘A very humble, pleasing type of person’
Like the rest of the nation, Bowen’s recruiting class members were mostly kept in the dark regarding the decision-making process throughout his recruitment.
Four-star cornerback Makari Vickers was in the car on the way to his own signing day when he heard the initial news Bowen was signing with Oregon.
“I was on Instagram scrolling and I saw it and I was like, ‘Wow,’” Vickers said. “I called my mom … But I was like, something feels off.”
Even Webb had no clue.
“I didn't know for sure until it happened,” Webb said. “I suspected it for a long time, but it was never spoken. I never asked, he never said and so it wasn’t until he actually made the decision that I realized that's what he's gonna do for sure.”
Five-star edge rusher Adepoju Adebawore and four-star running back Daylan Smothers were also pleasantly shocked with the end result of Bowen’s process.
Bowen and Arnold are now learning to adjust to college life together, frequently hitting up Campus Corner to hang out and eat. Bowen’s girlfriend is an OU soccer commit and he’s said being close to friends was influential to his decision.
“It’s good, especially having someone you know, especially just for how I am,” Bowen said. “I like having someone I can talk to … We'll always go into each other's rooms and just be annoying and talk crazy.”
Others, including Ducks and Fighting Irish fans were not. Bowen’s social media was flooded with negative comments from both fan bases, prompting him to silence his phone for a couple of days.
For Bowen, it was important for him to remember why he does what he does.
“My why is to make everything easy for my family,” Bowen said. “We didn't grow up the richest or have the most money, but just to be able to give back to them because they've done so much for me. Especially my grandma, all my family. Just everyone that's taken the time out of their day to drive me to practice or take me to 6 a.m. … Just to repay them and make their lives easier.”
Webb watched Bowen grow during the two years he coached him in high school and feels as if the young player’s intentions were misunderstood throughout the recruiting process.
“The things that people don't understand about Peyton,” Webb said, “Is that 100% of his indecision and some of the missteps that happened along the way, were born from trying to make other people happy and Peyton is, almost to a fault, a very humble, pleasing type of person.
“He wants to make the other people around him happy and when you're getting tugged at like a five-star recruit gets tugged at, you’ve got a lot of people that you're trying to please. That's what I think led to his difficulty in making a decision.”
Landing Bowen was icing on the cake for Oklahoma’s highest-rated recruiting class of all time. It also sent a message to the country that Venables isn’t settling for 6-7 and is on a mission to have the Sooners ready to compete in the SEC.
Venables acknowledged Thursday OU has a ways to go as a program, but the signings of Bowen, Arnold and Adebawore are all steps in the right direction. Only Alabama, Georgia and Texas signed more five-stars in 2023 than the Sooners.
Bowen knows he chose correctly with Oklahoma and is ready to prove to the rest of the country that with the right personnel and a Venables-led defense, OU could be scary.
“I’ve heard multiple times, history repeats itself,” Bowen said. “For many, many years, Venables had the No. 1 defense in college football. I knew that he didn't have his squad (last season), he didn't have his class really, (former OU coach Lincoln Riley) took half the people with him and so he was building from the ground up, which he got a lot of stuff for going 6-7.
“But with this class he brought in this year for defense and with so much veteran leadership coming back, we can definitely do something.”
This story was edited by Austin Curtright.
