Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley won Spencer Rattler’s commitment by showing up. 

In an age when the immediacy of social media and text messages reign, the Sooners’ football coach earned the commitment of the best pro-style quarterback in the 2019 class by walking and talking.

Rattler explained all of this from the driver's seat of his car. He's calling me back. We weren’t able to talk the first time because he was busy winning an Arizona state title in basketball with Phoenix Pinnacle High School. The second time we were scheduled to chat, he was competing at Elite 11—the nation's premier competition for high school quarterbacks. 

Eleven of the past 12 quarterbacks to win a Heisman Trophy took part in the event.

It takes the solitude of his vehicle, following the conclusion of another spring football practice at Pinnacle, but Rattler has graciously carved out some time to tell me how Riley made a believer out of him.

Come for the @SpencerRattler highlights. Stay for his outstanding interview. #Sooners https://t.co/KXtpAcB7d7

— RJ Young (@RJ_Young) March 19, 2018

Riley traveled 978 miles to Phoenix to recruit his quarterback. And he didn’t do it once. He did it three times in the span of two months before he was named the head man at Oklahoma. When NCAA rules prevented Riley from traveling for more face time with the jewel of his 2019 class, he sent OU outside receivers coach Dennis Simmons in his stead.

“He had the receivers coach actually come out to my basketball game this year. I think we won by, like 40,” Rattler says proudly. “So it was cool seeing him and saying hi. OU is always just showing love no matter where I’m at.”

Rattler didn’t grow up cheering for Oklahoma. There aren’t many, if any, kids in greater Phoenix with that sort of default affinity for a program located smack in the middle of the continental U.S. His initial interest was earned almost entirely through a concerted effort on the part of the Sooners’ coaching staff.

“I wanted to go to OU just because they recruited me hard,” he says. “I wanted to get out there and visit. And then Lincoln told me he was gonna become the head coach. Once he became the head coach, I was like, ‘Dad, I’m going here’… and I told Coach Riley, ‘We’re pulling the trigger when we get out there.’”

C O M M I T T E D ‼️??

I want to thank God, my family, and my coaches for guiding me through this process and giving me this opportunity! pic.twitter.com/5cdXu6N4Pg

— Spencer Rattler (@SpencerRattler) June 27, 2017

These are the kinds of gestures needed to find success in today’s college football recruiting world, which goes on year-round in one capacity or another. College coaches haven’t been able to recruit solely by foot and by phone for 15 years. They’ve needed to be on Twitter and Facebook for nearly a decade.

They also used to find it easier to keep kids in-state, instead of leaving the desert for the Great Plains. With Rattler being from Arizona, you’d be right to believe Arizona and Arizona State might have had a lead in winning Rattler’s services. But it was a lead neither school valued—not as far as Rattler’s concerned, anyway.

“Arizona State offered me,” he says. “They were my first offer, but they never really recruited me heavily like Coach Riley. Coach Riley came out to the school three times, and he’s all the way out in Oklahoma. The ASU coaches never came out. Really, Coach Riley is just the best recruiter I’ve seen around right now. As I tell everyone, he’s the most genuine coach—most real coach—and he relates to the younger people more. Really, that was a big part of my decision, and I’m happy with my decision for sure.”

Riley’s youth is an edge in recruiting. It’s the reason Heisman winner Baker Mayfield thought of Riley as more of an older brother than a coach. Their relationship was one of siblings—not of a commander and his field general.

.@LincolnRiley on @baker_mayfield6 pic.twitter.com/ZKyobimGdH

— Oklahoma Football (@OU_Football) November 20, 2017

Rattler didn’t want to play for the guy who is likely to yell at him for making a mistake. He wanted to play for the guy who grew teary-eyed while telling folks what his quarterback means to him in the process of explaining his decision to bench him on Senior Day.

These were all thoughts in the back of Rattler's mind when he visited USC and UCLA—a pair of blue bloods, much closer to his hometown. But neither felt like his home at the next level.

“USC, UCLA, LSU—almost every SEC school is trying to get at me now—Ohio State, Clemson, all those schools are hitting me up constantly,” Rattler says. “But I really never answer them. They all know I’m committed to OU, but you know how those coaches are. Still trying to get their players. I just respect them and say, ‘I’m already committed,’ and move on from there. And they respect my decision and kind of just move on after that."

Riley demonstrated his commitment to Rattler by erasing the thousand miles between them. Through that lens, it’s little wonder that Rattler continues to reciprocate that devotion.

The more things change, the more they stay the same, you might say. In 2018, more often than not, building long-lasting relationships is how you win in recruiting. Riley gets it. 

In about nine months, he’ll get his quarterback, too.

RJ Young is a former Oklahoma Sooners football and basketball beat writer, investigative journalist, essayist, novelist, and Ph.D student. His memoir "LET IT BANG" (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) hits shelves and earbuds in October. His YouTube channel is fire if you're into storytelling and topics ranging from Baker Mayfield to The Rock's early wrestling career to this one time when a guy got a little too interested in RJ's "Black Panther" cup at a urinal inside of a movie theater.