Two members of the Oklahoma football program have yet to make an appearance this season, and now we know why. Sort of.
Wednesday night, Bob Stoops revealed that redshirt freshman defensive tackle Du’Vonta Lampkin and redshirt sophomore offensive tackle Dwayne Orso-Bacchus are in the midst of serving six-game suspensions. According to the OU head coach, the twin suspensions stem from last season’s Orange Bowl playoff game; what specific incident in or around that CFP semifinal that triggered the punitive measures is decidedly unclear.
The lineman have already missed games against Houston and Louisiana-Monroe, and will sit out future contests with Ohio State, TCU, Texas and Kansas State. Both should be eligible to return for the Oct. 22 game at Texas Tech.
Orso-Bacchus played in six games in 2015 as a defensive lineman, ultimately moving to the other side the line late last year. He was a three-star 2014 signee.
Lampkin, meanwhile, was a signee as part of rival Texas’ 2015 recruiting class, but couldn’t enroll at UT because of a foreign language requirement. Charlie Strong, though, wouldn’t give Lampkin a release from his scholarship — the UT head coach “[didn’t] want to set [the] precedent that recruits can fail [a] course and go elsewhere” — leading Lampkin to appeal the decision.
In August of last year, Lampkin announced that he would be enrolling at OU. The three-star recruit took a redshirt as a true freshman.
Both Lampkin and Orso-Bacchus were penciled in as backups this season.