Wrestling: Oklahoma St. Flips Husker Commit Routledge

Nebraska’s 2025 recruiting class took a serious blow when its highest-ranked commitment Kody Routledge flipped to in-state Oklahoma State.

An Oklahoma native who is ranked #16 overall on the MatScouts 2025 Big Board, Routledge became the first commit of the David Taylor era in Stillwater. Taylor was hired as head coach this summer after he fell to Aaron Brooks in the Olympic Trials finals. Taylor was considered the pound-for-pound best wrestler in the world just a few months ago. He won Olympic gold in 2020 and has three World gold medals and one World silver, all at 86 kg. He was a two-time Hodge Trophy winner in college at Penn State and won two individual NCAA titles at 165 pounds, the same weight that Routledge will likely be at in college.

Taylor has been training at Penn State since graduating college and was the head of the M2 Training Center in State College. The most historically rich program in the country in wrestling, Oklahoma State is hoping Taylor can bring some of what Penn State has been doing recently to Stillwater.

With the loss of Routledge, Nebraska still has two high-level commits for the class of 2025 in Tyler Eise of Colorado and Cade Ziola of Omaha Skutt. Eise is ranked #24 in the class by MatScouts while Ziola is #35. Both are four-star prospects.