Nebraska Football: Huskers lose out on prospect the same day they got into the fight

The Nebraska football team thought they had a chance to land a former Maryland commit, and then Justin Okoronkwo committed elsewhere.

Remember those couple of hours when Nebraska football looked like it was going to swoop in and steal a commit from Maryland? Good times.

It turns out that when Justin Okoronkwo announced he was no longer a commit to Maryland, he wasn’t really reopening his recruitment. He simply knew which team he wanted to go to and it wasn’t a squad based in the Big Ten anymore.

The turn of events on Sunday is certainly an interesting one. The 3-star linebacker had been committed to Maryland since November of last year. While he hadn’t been the most loyal commit in the world, he seemed like he was going to stick.

While he was planning on being a Terp, he was also checking out other schools. That included a summer camp visit to Nebraska football. That’s why it felt as though the Nebraska football team had a real chance of scoring the linebacker. On Sunday evening, the prospect ended those chances. At least for now.

Nebraska football loses the fight

Justin Okoronkwo announced on Sunday evening that he is now committed to the Alabama Crimson Tide.

Obviously, even with the Nebraska football team on the kind of roll it is on, it will always be hard to beat Nick Saban in recruiting. That’s still true despite the fact that the Tide are surprisingly low ranked in 2024 classes so far.

It turns out that Sunday was a master class in how recruiting works. Things can move quite fast. Things can be topsy-turvy.

The good news about this particular Nebraska football recruiting loss is that the Huskers didn’t have to put to much time and effort in getting this particular swing. Onto the next recruit.