Could 5-star RB Rueben Owens flip following change at Louisville?

El Campo (Texas) five-star running back Rueben Owens has been committed to Louisville since the summer. And while some of his other Cardinal commits have been looking around this fall, Owens has stayed pretty set on Louisville.

But Scott Satterfield has accepted the head job at Cincinnati and what this means for Owens is unclear.

On3 National Recruiting Analyst Sam Spiegelman hopped on The Inside Scoop on Monday to talk about Owens’ recruitment and where it goes from here.

“Rueben Owens surprised all of us when he committed out of state, a guy that was wanted by TCU, Texas A&M and Longhorns — very badly, by the way,” Spiegelman said. “A record-setting running back out of El Campo, just about an hour south of Houston, Rueben Owens committed to Louisville…(He) seemed to be a big fan of Scott Satterfield and the offensive blueprint they had in place over there with a lot of reinforcements that would come in and play pretty quickly at Louisville. You’ve seen that Rueben Owens has kind of stood by his commitment despite other teams being rumored to be in pursuit because they have not stopped communicating with Ruben. But he has stood by Scott Satterfield, who is now the head coach at Cincinnati.”

Owens is the No. 28 overall recruit and No. 2 running back in the 2023 cycle, according to the On3 Consensus, a complete and equally weighted industry-generated average that utilizes all four major recruiting media companies.

He would be someone any team would like to flip and Spiegelman sees two teams in a prime position to do so.

“I think this is going to become a two team race,” Spiegelman said. “Texas A&M and TCU are the two notable teams to watch. I think he was leaning toward TCU before he committed to Louisville about a week later. Obviously, TCU is the number three team in the country and had a sensational season. But even before that, Sonny Dykes and that entire staff knew what kind of talent Rueben Owens is, obviously what he means to the state of Texas and we’re recruiting him at SMU and then at TCU.

“Texas A&M has been very careful not to recruit other running backs. Jimbo Fisher and Tommy Robinson have been after Reuben Owens since they’ve been at Texas A&M. I think that they eventually moved the head of Texas among the in state schools at certain point. They have not offered some of the best running backs in a state…I think that they’ve kept an eye on Owens and we’ll see if that turns into a visit here down the stretch.”

He currently has an On3 NIL Valuation of $245k. The On3 NIL Valuation is the industry’s leading index that sets high school and college athletes’ projected annual value (PAV). The NIL valuation does not act as a tracker of the value of NIL deals an athlete has completed to date. It rather signifies an athlete’s value at a certain moment in time.