USC football QB Caleb Williams set the record straight after a reporter and others misconstrued statements made by his father about leaving Oklahoma.
The nature of Caleb Williams’ departure from Oklahoma for USC is still the subject of online debate months after it all went down.
On Sunday, the quarterback himself decided to make things a little more clear after Mike Farrell called the idea of Williams allegedly being driven away from OU by Sooners fans “beyond ridiculous.”
“Reaction to this? Mine is — this is beyond ridiculous. Kid was gone. And entering the portal and not expecting OU to get another QB is laughable,” Farrell tweeted.
USC football: Caleb Williams calls out reporter for Oklahoma comment
Williams didn’t let Farrell’s tweet sit there without comment.
“Wanna take this done? The fans and my old teammates are the reason on y I almost stayed!” Williams quote tweeted Farrell, correcting “done” to “down” in another tweet.
The graphic Farrell posted with his initial tweet with a graphic that said “Caleb Williams dad says OU fans drove his son away.”
That idea appears to come from a Los Angeles Times profile on Williams, but it’s also a pretty big misread of the quotes.
In the article, Carl Williams said, “We didn’t know what we were going to do. And honestly, when we went to the portal, Oklahoma was at the top of the list. But they did some things that weren’t in his best interest.”
Caleb backed that up with his tweet saying he almost stayed in Norman because of the fans and his teammates. Some will choose not to believe him, but it’s not crazy to believe that a 19-year-old wasn’t certain about what he was going to do just a few weeks after his life as he knew it was thrown into uncertainty.
It seems the disconnect in all of this was the new Oklahoma staff trying to pressure Caleb into a quick decision to stay instead of considering his options. The Sooners picked up Dillon Gabriel from UCF on the same day the quarterback entered the portal. Essentially, they moved on.
Carl did bemoan the way fans “suddenly trend on his son” along with “all the vitriol about Caleb cashing in on his transfer choice.”
In the profile, everyone around Caleb reiterated that money was not the factor in his transfer.
“From Auburn to Wisconsin to here to back at Oklahoma, it didn’t matter to me. I knew anywhere I went, I was going to get NIL,” Caleb said.
From the get-go, the Williams camp has insisted that his professional development was the driving force behind his transfer. Going through the process of determining where he could be set up best for NFL success was important to the family. USC turned out to be the answer but why is it so hard to believe that a player and his family would consider all their options seriously before making a life-changing decision?
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