The Burning Question: What is Going on With Chris Obekpa?
By Chris Bains
The recruitment of Chris Obekpa has been one of the strangest and at times most frustrating processes for Cincinnati Bearcats fans since the whole Monty Madaris tease back in February.
No one outside of his inner circle, even the best of the best of the recruiting services, have a true bead on where he might be going. St. John’s? Maybe. The team is close to his family. Oregon? They need a power forward to build a program around and have sparkling new facilities (more on that in a second). Cincinnati? They’ve been a heavy favorite for most his recruitment and Mick Cronin has put in the extra effort to get him. DePaul, Providence, and UConn are also in the mix. It’s tough to say where the latter three stand but most of the chatter indicates Cincinnati, St. John’s, and Oregon are his top-3.
As far as I can tell, Oregon is still very much in play to land Obekpa even though they are came in very late in the process. But how hard the Ducks go after him could be determined upon where power forward Anthony Bennett decides to go. He has recently chopped Kentucky of off his list making Oregon and UNLV the favorites to land one of the best power forward prospects in the country. The hometown Runnin’ Rebels appear to have an edge but the Ducks haven’t folded yet. Until Bennett makes a decision, it’s probably best to assume that he is at the top of Oregon’s list with Chris Obekpa a close second. If Bennett opts for UNLV look for the Ducks pull out all the stops to land Obekpa.
That’s where it gets a little shady. It’s no secret that Oregon hasn’t been the most honest program when it came to recruiting football players but was it isolated to the football program? That I don’t know. But what we do know is that they are all-in trying to bring their basketball program into respectability. Oregon recently completed a lavish $227 million basketball arena with help from Nike in addition to tens-of-millions of dollars the company has poured into the rest of the Duck’s facilities. Seriously, they might as well just rename Eugene Niketown at this point.
The result is that Oregon (and Nike partially) are heavily invested in the success of their football and now basketball programs. Basketball in particular needs to win to boost ticket sales, athletic donations, and sponsorship money so they can see a return on that $227 million investment. That means rebuilding a mediocre program quickly by, in part, signing the best players from around the country. Since it’s in Oregon’s (and Nike’s) best interest to field winning programs on a national level, doesn’t it seem suspicious that Obekpa all of a sudden sees interest in the Ducks when they’ve only been talking to him for about two months and said athletic department just got caught recruiting football players illegally?
I’m not sayin’ but.. I’m just sayin’. Something smells fishy.
Regardless about what’s going on or not going on under the table in Eugene the end of the second signing period on May 16th is fast approaching. However from what I have pieced together it looks like that day will come and go without a decision from Mr. Obekpa. Signing periods allow basketball recruits to sign National Letters of Intent (NLI) that contractually bind them to a school. When a signing period passes recruits can still sign grant in aid papers for a school. The difference is that those documents don’t legally require Recruit-A for ever playing for School-A (h/t to Jeff Gentil for the details). What that means for Cincinnati is that even if he signs GIA’s this Summer he could still wind up in Oregon, St. John’s, or God-knows-where this Fall.
Unfortunately his inner circle has stayed very quiet and the only thing most of us have to run with right now are rumors. For now rumors are all we have. The minds of recruits are rubix cubes in and of themselves. Complicating matters even further are the strings of reports coming out of his camp about visits and his interest. What’s worse is that they are sporadic and sometimes conflicting. Tracking his status with Oregon, I believe Obekpa ‘delayed’, ‘cancelled’, and ‘rescheduled’ his visit to Eugene at least 17 times. I guess his visit is again back on. This has been a headache to say the least and probably won’t get any better if he doesn’t sign a letter of intent in the coming days.
To close, major props to Coach Cronin throughout this process. He’s been following Obekpa to the ends of the Earth to convince him to sign with Cincinnati and hasn’t let up. No coach has exerted more effort to land Chris Obekpa than Mick Cronin. That’s a fact. Hopefully when push comes to shove we can breath a sigh of relief that the talented power forward does just that. Right now the best we can do is keep our fingers crossed that he miraculously signs a NLI with UC before May 16th or signs GIA papers this Summer and still comes to Clifton in the Fall.