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Baker Mayfield: Five Things You May Not Know About the OU QB

By Chip Rouse

Oct 3, 2015; Norman, OK, USA; Oklahoma Sooners quarterback Baker Mayfield (6) looks to pass against the West Virginia Mountaineers in the second quarter at Gaylord Family - Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark D. Smith-USA TODAY Sports
Oct 3, 2015; Norman, OK, USA; Oklahoma Sooners quarterback Baker Mayfield (6) looks to pass against the West Virginia Mountaineers in the second quarter at Gaylord Family - Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Mark D. Smith-USA TODAY Sports /
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A year ago, there were a lot Sooner football fans who didn’t know much about Baker Mayfield.

Nov 21, 2015; Norman, OK, USA; Oklahoma Sooners quarterback Baker Mayfield (6) hands off to running back Samaje Perine (32) during the game against the TCU Horned Frogs at Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
Nov 21, 2015; Norman, OK, USA; Oklahoma Sooners quarterback Baker Mayfield (6) hands off to running back Samaje Perine (32) during the game against the TCU Horned Frogs at Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports /

They knew that Oklahoma was his second college team, having transferred after one season playing at Texas Tech. But that was about the sum of it.

All the OU quarterback did last season was lead the Sooners to an 11-2 record and take them to the College Football Playoff. The fans loved what they saw from the Mayfield-Lincoln Riley Air Raid offense, and they’re looking forward to seeing more of the same in 2016.

It is probably safe to say that there are few, if any, fans who are passionate about Oklahoma football who do not know about and are counting on Mayfield to lead the Sooners to a 10th Big 12 championship and then some next season.

Here are five things, though, that Sooners fans might not know about the former walk-on who finished fourth in last season’s Heisman Trophy balloting:

Mayfield grew up a fan of Oklahoma

, in Austin, Texas, the heart of the Texas Longhorn Nation, and thought he was going to attend TCU on a football scholarship before ending up at Texas Tech, where he walked on to the football team in the fall of 2013. Less than a year later, he was enrolled at the University of Oklahoma. The Sooner starting quarterback said in an interview session at last year’s College Football Playoff in the Orange Bowl against Clemson, and reported by

CBSSports.com

national college football writer Jon Solomon: “(TCU) told me they were gonna offer me a scholarship and kind of drug it out, and I told other schools I wasn’t interested because I thought I was going to go there. I truly believed they were going to offer me because they told me that.”

More from OU Football

  • His favorite sport while growing up was baseball. “That was my first love,” Mayfield said in a recent interview published on the Oklahoma athletics website. “I was a pretty good player, and right now I’m missing it a lot. I like to go out and watch our baseball games and see how Cody (former OU backup QB Cody Thomas) does and all our other guys. I like the Texas Rangers a lot,” he said. “I think, if I could, I would go try out. But I am a little busy right now.”
  • Oklahoma’s 2016 football home opener is a road contest against the University of Houston, which ended last season with a 13-1 record and as the eighth-ranked team in the nation in the final Associated Press Top 25. This game should draw national attention and will take on even more special importance to the Mayfield family. Both of his parents attended UH.
  • As the Sooners starting QB last season, Mayfield completed 51 more passes in 55 more pass attempts than he did in an eight-game season his freshman year at Texas Tech. He also threw three times as many touchdown passes (36) and two fewer interceptions (7) in five more games in 2015 as he did in eight games in 2013 (12 and 9).
  • Only two other quarterbacks from a Power Five conference threw more touchdown passes than Mayfield’s 36 last season. That did not get the OU quarterback an invite to the Heisman Trophy presentation ceremony in New York, but it did earn him All-America status as well as the Burlsworth Trophy as the best college player to begin his career as a walk-on.
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