Tulsa could sway 3-Star Air Force WR commit Malik Rogers

HOUSTON, Tex. -- Three-star Shadow Creek wide receiver Malik Rogers is a recent commitment to Air Force, but just because his decision is still fresh, doesn’t mean that it’s set in stone.

In fact, he let the Falcons staff know when he committed that he still had a shortlist of teams that stood a good chance of causing him to reconsider his options should the opportunity present itself.

“I told them there are only a couple of colleges that could possibly grab my interest away from Air Force,” he said. “It was Stanford, Tulsa, and Vanderbilt … I haven’t heard anything from Stanford, so I’ll probably drop that, I really like Tulsa a lot - the offense, everything about it, I just have to take a visit up there and see if I really like it.”

Tulsa might want to start reciprocating some of that interest. In Rogers’ game last weekend against Silsbee, he returned a punt for a touchdown and had an 80-plus yard touchdown reception on a catch where he pinned a ball thrown behind him to the covering defender’s back before ripping it away and finishing the play.

Perhaps that’s the play that will convince the Golden Hurricane staff to make good on the interest it has shown him in recent weeks and offer him.

“Keylon (Stokes) went there from Manvel, so I’ve been talking to him about it,” he said. “He said he loves it up there. I have to get up there on a visit - I have been talking to the quarterbacks coach - he’s the recruiter in our area. I have to get up there for a game or something, because I’ve been liking Tulsa for a while, so I can’t really wait.”

That’s not to say that he’s an apathetic commitment to Air Force. Rogers has made multiple trips out to Colorado on various visits since the offseason and plans to take his official there in January.

“I’ve already went to a game against San Diego State,” he said. “It got really rainy up there and we had to leave in the second quarter, but I talked to the team, all the coaches, but the atmosphere is perfectly fine - I love it up there. In January I think it will be different because I’ll see if I really want to be up in that weather, it’s going to be real cold.”

It’s understandably tough for service academies to hold on to players with the type of big-play potential that Rogers has, even though he’s been relatively under-recruited. He said ahead of last week’s game that he thought Tulsa was a ‘7-out-of-10’ when gauging what he thought their level of interest was in him. Although the results haven’t fallen heavily in the Golden Hurricane's favor this season, plenty of attention has been given to the team’s potency on offense and should the staff choose to offer Rogers, that will be something he’ll seriously consider.