Oklahoma Football: Top 10 Quarterbacks in Modern Sooners History
By Chip Rouse
Nov 8, 2014; Norman, OK, USA; Oklahoma Sooners sooner schooner before the game against the Baylor Bears at Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
No. 4 – Steve Davis (1973-75)
Steve Davis had two dreams growing up in eastern Oklahoma in the small town of Sallisaw: to be a Baptist minister and to play quarterback for the Oklahoma Sooners. He was ordained as a Baptist minister as a teenager, and beginning in 1972, he got to realize his dream of becoming a football player at Oklahoma.
ESPN.com staff writer Jake Trotter once reported that the only two songs Davis said he knew when he graduated from high school were “Amazing Grace” and “Boomer Sooner.”
Former Oklahoma All-American Leon Cross, the OU recruiter working the eastern side of the state, convinced then Sooners’ head coach Chuck Fairbanks to take a chance on Davis, even though Fairbanks was concerned that Davis wasn’t as big, as fast or as strong as other quarterbacks Oklahoma had been recruiting. When he got to OU, Davis reportedly was No. 8 out of eight freshman quarterbacks.
It was a chance well worth taking, as it turned out. Davis quarterbacked two national championship teams at OU (1974 and 1975). In his first Red River rivalry game against Texas, Davis quarterbacked the Sooners to a decisive 52-13 thrashing of the Longhorns. The Sooners were 32-1-1 in the three seasons that Davis was the quarterback, which is the NCAA record for winning percentage at the quarterback position. .
Oklahoma won 28 consecutive games with Davis as the starting quarterback. The only game the Sooners lost while Davis was playing was a 23-3 upset loss to Kansas in 1975. The Jayhawks were a 28-point underdog coming into the game, and Oklahoma was No. 2 in the nation at the time.
Davis tragically died in 2013, when the small, twin-engine jet plane in which is was a passenger crashed in South Bend, Ind. He was 60 years old.
Next: No. 3 - Jack Mildren (1969-71)