Mixed signals on whether or not LSU football will land 5-star OL

LSU football is in a fierce battle for an elite five-star offensive lineman.

After back-to-back weekend visits, it appears that LSU football is the program to beat for five-star offensive lineman Tristan Leigh.

Leigh, 6-foot-5/270 lbs from Fairfax, VA (Robinson Secondary), is rated in 247Sports’ composite rankings as the No. 4 offensive tackle in the nation and the No. 11 overall 2021 recruit in the nation.

The Virginia native was part of the group of elite recruits that visited Baton Rouge a couple of weeks ago (along with four-star Tigers commit Garrett Nussmeier, five-star defensive Korey Foreman, five-star defensive tackle Maason Smith, and several others). Leigh reportedly enjoyed his trip to Baton Rouge so much that he returned this past weekend with his girlfriend.

The back-to-back weekend trips all the way from Virginia to Baton Rouge were enough for me to label LSU as the favorites to land Leigh.

But I may have made my prediction too soon.

Recruiting analyst doesn’t have LSU football landing Leigh

Rivals recruiting analyst Mike Farrell recently made some predictions for several of the nation’s top recruits, including Leigh.

And he doesn’t have the Tigers landing the dominant offensive tackle.

Instead, Farrell thinks the Oklahoma Sooners will be the program that gets a commitment from Leigh.

“I’ve changed my FutureCast to Oklahoma here after he’s visited both the Sooners and LSU. He will be the perfect combo with (Bryce) Foster,” wrote Farrell.

Farrell is a very plugged-in recruiting analyst. And I generally think he makes solid predictions (recruiting is unpredictable, so they don’t always prove to be correct), but I have to disagree with him here.

Oklahoma is certainly a factor for Leigh. The Sooners definitely made a big impression on the Virginia native.

But I don’t think Oklahoma made the same impression that LSU made. The fact that Leigh wanted to get back on campus with his girlfriend as quickly as possible tells me that the Tigers are clearly in the lead here.

There will still be some twists and turns in Leigh’s recruitment, but I’d be surprised if LSU didn’t prevail in this battle.