Kyler Murray expected to play football for Oklahoma this season

Kyler Murray is in line to be drafted early in the upcoming MLB draft, but he’s still expected to play football at Oklahoma this season.

Kyler Murray is the favorite to replace Baker Mayfield as the Oklahoma Sooners starting quarterback this year, which will obviously not be easy and probably won’t happen seamlessly. But Murray also plays baseball at Oklahoma and he’s in line to be drafted very early in the 2018 MLB Draft, which starts Monday.

It would seem to be obvious for Murray to choose baseball over football, with far better pro prospects as an outfielder. And that leaves aside the greater risk of severe injury in football, and how contracts are guaranteed or not guaranteed in MLB and the NFL.

But Sooners’ head coach Lincoln Riley said he’s not concerned about Murray’s MLB draft status keeping him off the football team this season.

"I knew the deal when we were getting into it. [They have] lived up to their word in every part of it,” said Riley, who added that Murray wouldn’t be playing summer baseball and instead would work out with the football team. Murray said last month he was still unsure as to whether he’d be playing summer baseball."

Murray is currently No. 38 on the Big Board of ESPN baseball analyst Keith Law. That’s a couple steps down from No. 36 less than a month ago, and that latter corresponding hypothetical draft position comes with a $1.97 million slotted signing bonus. Pick No. 38 is slotted to carry a $1.87 million signing bonus, and all the way down to pick No. 64 the slotted signing bonuses are over $1 million.

Next: 30 best jerseys in college football

But even with that significant money coming to him soon, and also postponing the start of his baseball career by choosing not to play summer ball, Murray will compete with Austin Kendall for the right to replace Mayfield as Oklahoma’s starting quarterback during fall camp. There’s a fine line between being a competitor and taking an undue risk, but Murray deserves credit for keeping an apparent promise to Riley. The MLB team that drafts him will just be crossing their fingers he doesn’t tear an ACL.