NORMAN — Khyree Jackson, a solid verbal commitment to the University of Alabama, found himself last weekend attending the Sooner Summit.

As in, Oklahoma Sooners.

Jackson is one of the top junior college cornerbacks in the nation out of East Mississippi Community College. He had offers from Oklahoma, Oregon, Florida State, Ole Miss, Louisville, South Carolina, Kentucky and others before Alabama offered a scholarship on May 19. He then got more offers from Florida, Tennessee and Auburn before giving ‘Mama his verbal pledge on Aug. 15.

And yet, he was all too happy to attend the get-together in Norman with old pals Caleb Williams and Jalil Farooq, who all hail from the D.C-Maryland-Virginia area.

“Me, Caleb and Jalil, we work out together pretty frequently,” Jackson told SI Sooners. “This was before I actually committed, and they told me about like they planned on doing a trip, just going down there — not really something that was more (by) the school, but something we came up with ourselves. I was definitely interested in doing it.”

Jackson, a 6-foot-3, 197-pound cover corner from Upper Marlboro, MD, attended the same high school (Henry Wise) as Farooq. Their school is 20 miles from Williams’ Gonzaga College High School.

So Jackson characterized his participation in Sooner Summit as hanging out with old friends, getting to meet new ones and enjoying a relaxed weekend away.

But odd things happen in recruiting. And Williams apparently has quite the sales pitch.

“Everything is open-minded,” Jackson acknowledged. “I’m definitely committed. I’m not taking away from my commitment to Alabama. But at the end of the day, I still have to sign on the dotted line when it comes to signing day.”

Did he talk to Nick Saban about attending something called the Sooner Summit?

“Did I talk to coach Saban? Yeah, I talked to him,” Jackson said. “I talked to all the coaches. I let them know I was coming down here.”

He said Saban told him to make the trip and have fun. Saban apparently tells his verbal pledges that.

“He thinks that you’re not really getting the experience by not going to visit the schools,” Jackson said. “He feels like you’re getting the experience; why not? You’re getting five free trips, why not take them?”

This wasn’t a free trip. Jackson and the others all paid their own way. And it didn’t count against the NCAA’s limit of five official visits (those are paid for by the schools) because NCAA recruiting is currently in a prolonged dead period.

“I still want to get on all of my visits, also,” Jackson said. “So it was a good way to get down here and see Norman.”

Sooner Nation should naturally get excited over a prospect like Jackson keeping his options open. But listen to how he talks about Saban, and it’s easy to see why he told Alabama he’ll be coming to Tuscaloosa.

“The relationship that I built with coach Saban,” Jackson said. “He did numerous things that stood out that, I felt like after talking with all the head coaches in my top (group), he just did things that stood out differently. All the coaches told me things they liked about me, but coach Saban was the first to tell me things he didn’t like.”

Such as?

“He told me, like, in a game, he noticed when it gets around third or fourth quarter, I start to get lazy. I like stand up and don’t like to get in my backpedal,” Jacksons aid. “And those are things I know subconsciously about myself, but I won’t say it out loud. And the fact that he noticed and was able to point those things out, it meant a lot.

“Also, all the coaches were saying, ‘When you come here, you can stay off campus, you can live anywhere you want to live, it’ll be a good time.’ Coach Saban let me know, ‘No, when you get here, you’ve got to stay on campus. You’ve got to stay in the dorms until you can prove that you can stay off campus.’ I understand it’s gonna be much more serious, but I think that’s what I need.”

Game, set and match, right?

Then again, Jackson says he definitely has a connection with Lincoln Riley. He said he and Riley chat “very frequently” via FaceTime.

“Me and coach Riley, probably out of all the head coaches I was talking to, have the second-strongest relationship,” Jackson said. “He’s definitely a coach, since Day 1 — ever since I talked to him — he’s been genuine and letting me know, like, he understands that Oklahoma may not be a school that’s known for defense, he makes that clear, but he understands that they’re on the uprise.

“He tells me the numbers that coach (Alex) Grinch and them, ever since they’ve been there, how they moved from 10th (in the Big 12 defensive rankings) to first and second in a lot of categories and stuff like that.”

Oklahoma was Jackson’s first blue blood offer. OU offered a scholarship way back on Feb. 26. Alabama didn’t drop an offer until May 19.

Jackson said he wasn’t eligible out of high school, so he started the juco route at Fort Scott (KS) Community College. Jackson said when his coach left, he transferred to East Mississippi.

“Definitely been a long road from the juco paths,” Jackson said. “Juco’s not easy, as they all say. But, definitely worth it.”

He said his visit to the OU campus was brief — “we didn’t get to no football stuff,” Jackson said — but he went home impressed.

“I definitely like what I’ve seen,” he said.

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