Oklahoma defensive lineman announces position change

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The Oklahoma Sooners put in plenty of work during the two weeks that the transfer portal was open, and with it now closed, general manager Jim Nagy, head coach Brent Venables and their respective staffs will continue to look to add impact transfers via the portal. OU also retained many important players, in a testament to the culture Venables has built in Norman.

One player who is returning to the Sooners announced on Saturday that he is changing positions. Defensive lineman Ace Hodges took to social media to tell fans that he is returning to the Sooners, but also to announce that he’ll now be an offensive lineman at Oklahoma.

More specifically, Hodges, a defensive tackle for the Sooners for the past two seasons, will now be playing center for OU. Both are positions where Oklahoma is in need of more depth, but after only appearing in one game over two seasons on defense, Hodges saw a clearer path to playing time on offense.

Hodges is a local product from Casady School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and he played both ways in high school. He was a redshirt freshman on OU’s 2025 roster, and he’ll be providing depth at the center position.

Much of the roster shuffle for the Sooners appears to be in the rearview mirror, aside from the looming NCAA decision regarding whether or not star linebacker Owen Heinecke still has one more year of eligibility. OU and Heinecke are still waiting to hear back, and there is no timeline for that decision from the NCAA.

When it comes to subtractions from the roster, Oklahoma is losing the players who have exhausted their collegiate eligibility. Many of those players will go to the NFL Draft, but they won’t be playing college football next year. The Sooners would typically lose players as early entrants to the NFL Draft, but for the second straight season, that deadline came and went without an OU player forgoing his college eligibility in order to go pro. Then, there’s the portal, which closed on Friday night. The Sooners, just like every other team, saw plenty of players hit the portal market, and choose to transfer out.

When it comes to adding players to the roster, the Sooners have their 2026 high school recruiting class all wrapped up, but they can still gain players via the portal, even though the deadline to enter has passed. With most of the portal madness already over, the Sooners are still searching for some depth at some key positions as they head into the offseason to get ready for the 2026 season.

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This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: OU defensive lineman set to return to team, change positions in 2026

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