Here's the weirdest part of the sooner summit - it's that Drumm has basically said that this kind of thing has never been done before. which is insane. The player led meetups have been going on for decades at schools that do a lot of regional recruiting. Miami and FSU were doing this in the fucking 90s. I can remember when party buses would take kids from south Dallas directly to the infamous FSU/PVAM parties. @TBGFL probably remembers this stuff as well. The Miami guys and the FSU guys then started to feign interest and then recruit for their own schools, etc ... Texas has done these. LSU has done these. Aggy has done these - even fairly recently (that pool party disaster comes to mind). The thing is - most coaching staffs will try to quash these before they happen because for all the good they can do they can do far more damage. If you don't have coaches and player personnel people there to change the ebb and flow of the dialogue you can have some real issues. If you don't have them there to deflect from -- let's say LARGE personalities (parents or kids) you can actually alienate recruits (or parents). If you don't have them there and the players begin discussing other teams/fanbases/parents/recruits/players -- you can't avoid the landmines that these convos can produce. Now most of the sooner summit guys already know each other and have known each other for years so that seems like a non-issue here, though I'd have been worried if more Texas kids were going to be a part of it, if I was RIley. For sure.
I don't think Drumm is overly involved as in planning (he may have nudged or helped with communications, who knows) but honestly I think he's overly invested because he's a fanboi. He's a CW and family fanboi, he's an OU fanboi, and for whatever reason he sees this as a revolutionary event. It's just like when Kyler was coming to aggy and every word he said was gospel to Hamm. They were going to get everybody ... then the class fell almost exactly like you'd expect. I do think Drumm should be careful about things like meeting recruits at the airport at the request of another recruit and his family. That is getting into some ground that much like Hamm, can lead to OU having to distance themselves from him and the loss of credentials, etc ... you can't be going on water slides with teen recruits.
I think the whole thing is overblown because Drumm is simply a lot like Hamm. He believed every kid who said "oh yeah, I'll be there" or "I'm gonna do my best to make it out" or whatever. Once he oversold the event to his readers he felt personally attacked when kids predictably backed out and the fans weren't still all-in for the event the way he was. His quote about "you just don't see this even in a regular year", etc ...
When Farooq and Gilliam announce he's going to be bananas.