Oklahoma Football: Five Best Sooner Receivers All-Time

In the modern era of college football, a time period roughly running from post-World War II to the present, no team has more wins than the Oklahoma Sooners. Prior to the turn of the century in 2000, Oklahoma football was best known for high-powered offensive play dominated by an electrifying and explosive run game like no other.

Before Bob Stoops arrived in 1999 as the Sooners’ 21st head coach, Oklahoma didn’t bother much putting the football in the air – largely because it didn’t have to and also as Oklahoma alum and former quarterback Darrell Royal once said: “When you throw a pass, three things can happen and two of them are bad.”

The split-T formation popularized by Bud Wilkinson’s dominant Oklahoma teams in the 1950s and the Wishbone offense that Barry Switzer’s Sooner teams in the 1970s and ’80s parlayed into three national championships and 12 Big Eight Conference crowns were best-geared to multiple-option, power running games and executed to near perfection by a seemingly endless supply of uber-talented running backs recruited to apply their flashy speed and ground skills at Oklahoma.

All of that took a dramatic turn, however, when Stoops brought with him to Oklahoma an assistant named Mike Leach, who was an advocate of the spread formation, placing as many as three or four receivers out wide, stretching the field and the defensive coverage and flooding the field with pass routes.

Leach was only at Oklahoma for one season, but the Air Raid-style offense took hold there as the Sooners’ offensive style changed with the times and became more spread formations supported – or perhaps complemented is a better word – by a good if not great run game.

Letting it fly more has worked out really well for the Sooners. They won a national championship in Stoops second season as head coach and have delivered nine Big 12 championships, more than double the next best Big 12 team.

It is telling that the top 10 career leaders in pass receiving at Oklahoma all played during the Stoops era. That is also true of the top four career passing leaders. In fact, seven of the top ten OU career passing leaders played under Stoops.

The contrast in the two difference Oklahoma offensive eras is illustrated by the Sooners five Heisman Trophy winners. The first three Oklahoma players to be awarded the Heisman (Billy Vessels in 1952, Steve Owens in 1969 and Billy Sims, 1978) were all premier running backs. The other two OU Heisman winners, and the most recent Sooners to be awarded college football’s most coveted individual prize, were both passing quarterbacks (Jason White in 2003 and Sam Bradford in 2008), and another Sooner signal caller, Josh Heupel, was the runner-up in Oklahoma’s 2000 national championship season.

Going by the numbers alone, it would be easy to conclude that the best pass receivers ever to play at Oklahoma came after the year 2000. That statement is largely true, but there were also a couple of players from earlier Sooner eras that may not have put up the same receiving numbers, but had they played today, in my estimation, would no doubt have finished high up on the career leaderboard.

Here is my list of the five best Oklahoma pass receivers of all-time. You might be surprised by a couple of the names.

Ryan Broyles

Ryan Broyles (at OU from 2008-11) was a home-grown product, growing up in nearby Oklahoma City and playing high school ball at Norman High. He couldn’t have played at OU at a better time, a prime passing target for both Sam Bradford and Landry Jones, the Sooners’ top two career passing leaders.

Broyles, a two-time consensus All-American, is second all-time in NCAA career receptions (349) and receiving yards (4.586) and is the Oklahoma career leader in career receptions, yards, touchdowns (45) and 100-yard pass-receiving games (23).

I have not seen a Sooner receiver who was more sure handed and seemed to catch almost any ball that was within his reach. He might have put up even better numbers had his senior season not been cut short in an early November game against Texas A&M, when he suffered a season-ending ACL injury.

Sterling Shepard

The player who stands second to Ryan Broyles on the Oklahoma career receiving chart is less than a year removed from a brilliant collegiate career as a Sooner. Sterling Shepard (2012-15), the son of a former great Oklahoma receiver who played for Barry Switzer in the 1980s. Shepard is undersized for a receiver, but he plays much bigger than his size and is another sure-handed receiver who has an uncanny ability to get his feet down on tight sideline catches.

His 86 receptions last season is the third most in a single season in Sooner football history, and he is tied with three other former Oklahoma receivers for the most catches in a game (15), which he did two years again against Kansas State. Shepard also had a 14-catch game vs. Baylor last season.

Mark Clayton

In quarterback Jason White’s Heisman season, he had a sure-handed, speedy receiver of his own as a prime target. Mark Clayton (2001-04) caught 83 passes that season (2003), tied for fourth best all-time in one season at Oklahoma. His 83 catches, 1,425 receiving yards and 15 touchdowns in 2003 were all school records at the time.

The pass-receiving combination of White to Clayton brought the Sooners two Big 12 championships and took them to consecutive BCS Championship games in 2004 and 2005.

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Clayton finished his Sooner career with 221 receptions for 3,241 yards and 31 touchdown catches, which places his third on the Oklahoma all-time pass-receiving list.

Tommy McDonald

Tommy McDonald was a two-time All-American halfback at Oklahoma from 1954-56, playing for the legendary Bud Wilkinson. His final two seasons at Oklahoma, in 1955 and 1956, the Sooners went undefeated and won back-to-back national championships. That was during Oklahoma NCAA-record 47-game winning streak.

McDonald won the Maxwell Award in 1956, presented every year to the best player in college football.

At Oklahoma, McDonald was used primarily as a running back. In fact, in his three seasons at OU, he reached double digits in pass receptions just once. He caught a dozen passes in his senior year (1956). The two seasons before that he caught two and seven passes, respectively.

So, how, you ask, can McDonald be considered one of the all-time best pass receivers in Sooner football history when he caught just 21 passes in his career?

While the New Mexico native was an All-American halfback at Oklahoma, McDonald went on to a Pro-Football Hall of Fame wide receiver over 12 seasons in the National Football League with five different teams. His best years were with the Philadelphia Eagles, the team that selected him with the 31st overall pick in the 1957 NFL Draft.

Over his NFL career, McDonald caught 495 passes for a total of 8,410 yards.

Tinker Owens

In the Owens family, brother Steve got most of the headlines as a Heisman-winning running back at Oklahoma. Steve preceded his younger brother, Tinker, at OU by three years.

Tinker (1972-75) was classified as a split end. Some would say that the younger Owens had the misfortune of playing a position that didn’t see all that much action – except when absolutely necessary, which wasn’t often – in the early days of the run-oriented Wishbone offense.

Although he went by the nickname Tinker, his birth name was Charles Wayne Owens. He caught  only 62 passes total in his four seasons at Oklahoma, but many of them were of the home-run variety for big yardage. He averaged 23 yards per catch as a prime Sooner receiving target.

The younger Owens was a quality receiver in a run-heavy offense. His talent earned him All-America honors in back-to-back seasons (1974-75), the same two seasons in which Oklahoma won national championships four and five in the school’s renowned football history.

Owens was accomplished enough as a receiver that he was a fourth-round draft pick of the New Orleans Saints, with whom he played four seasons.