Continuing out countdown to kickoff of the 2015 college football season, we move to No. 4 on the list of my five Oklahoma Sooner football favorites of all-time.
Eight days and counting…
No. 4 Tommy McDonald
Tommy McDonald is one of those former Sooner players from the distant past that most Sooner fans of the present have only heard about. I was nine years old in McDonald’s senior season, and Oklahoma was one of the college teams that were on TV a lot in those days because of its lofty national standing.
That’s when I first became a fan of Oklahoma football, and No. 25 was one of the first Sooners I identified with watching the games on black-and-white television. He seemed to have the ball in his possession a lot, and when he did something good usually would result.
McDonald was a rarity during the time he played at Oklahoma in the mid 1950s. He was one of the few players on the roster not from the state of Oklahoma or Texas. He was from Roy, New Mexico, a very small town in the northeastern part of the state. He wasn’t a very big man, which may have been another reason I enjoyed watching him so much.
McDonald was a halfback at Oklahoma, although he would make his mark professional as a flanker, or what today is termed a wide receiver. He played in the Split-T formation that the legendary Bud Wilkinson employed to great success, along with fellow backfield mates Clendon Thomas and Billy Pricer.
The Sooners won national championships in successive seasons in 1955 and ’56, going undefeated both years. In fact, McDonald never played on a losing team while he was at Oklahoma. The Sooners were 31-0 in 1955 through the 1956 seasons. If that isn’t impressive enough, fifteen of those 31 victories were by shutout.
McDonald, described in Jim Dent’s best-selling book “The Undefeated,” about Oklahoma’s NCAA-record 56-game winning streak, as “Elvis in Cleats,” was third in the Heisman balloting in 1956. College football’s ultimate prize was won that year by Paul Hornung of Notre Dame, a team the Sooners beat that season by a score of 40-0.
One of the all-time greats to play football for the University of Oklahoma, McDonald was a two-time All-American and named a consensus All-American in 1956. He also won the prestigious Maxwell Award that season as the best player in college football.
McDonald went on to another outstanding career at the next level. A third-round draft pick of the Philadelphia Eagles, McDonald played 12 seasons in the NFL, seven of which were with the Eagles. He was a member of the 1960 Philadelphia team that won an NFL championship over the Green Bay Packers.
His best season in professional football may have been 1965, when he caught a career-high 67 passes for 1,036 yards and nine touchdowns. Obviously, the skill that he demonstrated catching passes out of the backfield while at Oklahoma served him well in his NFL career.
McDonald was a six-time Pro-Bowl selection, and in 1998 was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He also is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame, to which he was inducted in 1985.
Oklahoma has produced many outstanding college players over several eras, but Tommy McDonald will always be among my very favorite Sooners of all-time.