Texas and Georgia are emerging as the main players for one of the country’s top young running backs.
Micah Rhodes, a 2028 four-star back who decommitted from Oklahoma, is trending toward a new decision in the months ahead. According to Sam Spiegelman of Rivals, the Longhorns and Bulldogs are now the prime contenders for his pledge.
Rhodes has drawn 34 scholarship offers, and the recruiting picture is starting to narrow around him. He checks in as the No. 5 running back, the No. 9 prospect in Texas and the No. 73 overall player in the 2028 Rivals 300.
The Klein Oak High School standout has already built an impressive résumé. The 5-foot-9, 180-pound runner finished his freshman season with 934 rushing yards and 10 touchdowns, then picked up Offensive Newcomer of the Year honors in his district.
MaxPreps also named him a Freshman All-America in 2024 and later included him on its Sophomore All-America team in 2025. He has also been invited to the 2027 Polynesian Bowl.
Gabe Brooks of 247Sports described Rhodes as a "well-rounded back who does several position-specific duties well" and said he can "play through contact and regularly finishes runs" in an August 2025 evaluation.
Texas has a couple of built-in advantages in this race. Rhodes is from Spring, Texas, just north of downtown Houston and within four hours of Austin, and his grandfather, Bobby Rhodes, played linebacker for the Longhorns in the late 1980s. That makes him a legacy target for Texas, too.
The Longhorns offered him during a camp in early June of 2025, and he has been back twice since then. One visit came for the Texas A&M game at the end of the 2025 season, and the other was for a spring practice in March.
Georgia, meanwhile, is chasing another elite back to keep its pipeline rolling. The Bulldogs have long leaned on standout runners, with names like Herschel Walker in the 1980s and Todd Gurley and Nick Chubb in the mid-2010s anchoring that tradition.
A Rhodes commitment would give Georgia back-to-back classes with a top-five running back pledge after Kemon Spell, the No. 1 running back in the 2027 cycle, switched from Penn State and committed to the Bulldogs on Feb. 2.
Georgia first offered Rhodes in September of 2025, five months before his Oklahoma commitment. His most recent recruiting visit to Athens came on May 16.
In Other News...
Taylor Wein Just Made A Fascinating Oklahoma Breakout Prediction
Taylor Weins turn at SEC Media Days came with a little bit of history attached. A year after R Mason Thomas put Wein on the map as Oklahomas breakout defensive player, Wein was the one doing the spotlighting in 2026, and the Sooners have reason to pay attention when a player who has already lived through that kind of prediction starts making his own. The setting matters here, because Oklahoma is again trying to sort out who can step into a larger defensive role and become more than just a familiar name on the depth chart.
PJ Adebawore fits that conversation neatly. He has been around the program for three seasons, has appeared in every game, and has yet to make a start, but the expectation is that his role grows in 2026 as Oklahoma looks for answers on the edge. There is also a longer runway here, with another season of eligibility potentially waiting after this one, which gives the Sooners a little more flexibility as they try to replace production and find the next defender ready to follow the same breakout path. [Read more 🡒]
OU Linebacker Room Suddenly Puts Cole Sullivan In The Spotlight
With Oklahomas linebacker room thinned by departures and injuries, Brent Venables has had to lean harder on transfer Cole Sullivan than the staff might have expected when he arrived from Michigan. Sullivan has been trained to handle multiple linebacker spots, and the Sooners have already seen him earn trust in the room, not just as a body in a depleted rotation but as a player teammates have gravitated toward.
The depth chart around him has only made his importance grow. Oklahoma has lost Kendal Daniels, Kobie McKinzie and Sammy Omosigho, while Taylor Heims injury has further squeezed the group behind the top options, leaving little margin for error at linebacker. Sullivans versatility gives the staff some flexibility, but it also puts him squarely in the middle of a situation that could keep shifting as the season unfolds. [Read more 🡒]