Top NC high school football recruit Daylan Smothers has picked his college
Daylan Smothers will play college football at Oklahoma, the top recruit announced Thursday at Ranson Middle School.
Smothers, a 5-foot-11, 182-pound running back who played at Chambers High School for the last three years, picked OU over finalists Florida State, North Carolina State and Alabama.
“Why Oklahoma? The relationship I built with DeMarco Murray,” Smothers said. “And the coaching staff throughout that program did a good job recruiting me and my family to make me feel like it’s a home away from home.”
247Sports Composite Player Rating ranks Smothers as the No. 9 overall player in North Carolina, and with good reason. The two-time Charlotte Observer offensive player of the year earned North Carolina’s Mr. Football honors as a sophomore and led Chambers to its second straight 4AA state championship.
In his junior year, he brought his school back to the state championship game after running for 1,581 yards and 28 touchdowns. Chambers lost to Raleigh’s Cardinal Gibbons in the final but Smothers was once again honored as a top-three finalist for Mr. Football 2021.
247Sports also ranks Smothers as the ninth-best running back in the class of 2023.
As for this fall, there’s still a question of where he’ll play high school football as a senior, and he said Thursday that he didn’t have an update on that situation.
In April, Smothers announced that he’d play his senior season at West Charlotte and live with his mother. However, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools suspended Smothers for 365 days in June due to an eligibility issue, a decision which the running back and his family are appealing. Smothers reportedly did not have a valid residence in the Chambers zone during the 2021 football season.
The suspension would force Smothers to miss his entire senior year and prevent him from playing for another public high school in North Carolina governed by the NCHSAA.
The suspension does not apply to private schools in the state governed by the NCISAA, nor across the border in South Carolina.
This story was originally published July 14, 2022 at 5:05 PM.