Big 12 Football: Former OU QB Caleb Williams officially transfers to USC

The news officially came down late in the morning of Feb. 1 that Big 12 football would be losing one of its brighter young stars in the now former Oklahoma Sooners breakout freshman quarterback Caleb Williams. After putting his name in the NCAA Transfer Portal last month, Williams has now officially found his next landing spot.

Multiple sources confirmed the news early this week that Williams will be taking his talents to join up with former Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley and the USC Trojans in the PAC-12 out of the transfer portal. This highly anticipated decision from Williams comes after a few weeks of waiting as he went through a patient recruitment process in the transfer portal.

It sounds like this process is now going to move very fast for Williams to get enrolled for classes at USC after having the news of his commitment to the Trojans officially announced this week. Williams is reportedly expected to be in class this week at USC.

Big 12 football loses a young star with former OU QB Caleb Williams transferring to USC

There were a few schools involved in this process for Williams to find his next landing spot out of the portal early this offseason. Oklahoma and USC looked to be the top two schools throughout this process for Williams. But other schools such as the LSU Tigers, Wisconsin Badgers, and even the Clemson Tigers had some level of connections to Williams in the last month or so.

But USC looked to have an edge in this battle to land a commitment from Williams out of the portal since he first put his name on the market in early January. Riley and the new USC coaching staff is largely the group that recruited Williams and coached him up during his freshman campaign in Norman.

And seeing how many other former Sooners players landed with Riley and the Trojans out of the portal already this offseason likely helped to push Williams to join the rest of this group.

It also helped ease the decision of Williams in all likelihood to land with USC that former Trojans freshman quarterback Jaxson Dart transferred to join head coach Lane Kiffin and the Ole Miss Rebels earlier this offseason. Williams now looks to have a clear path to be the starting quarterback for the Trojans in 2022.

Oklahoma has already landed a commitment from another quarterback out of the transfer portal this offseason in former UCF Knights star Dillon Gabriel. The Big 12 is now going to have a number of new starting quarterbacks brought in by way of the portal in 2022 including Texas’ Quinn Ewers, Oklahoma’s Gabriel, and Kansas State’s Adrian Martinez, among others.