Oklahoma football: Ranking the Sooners’ six Heisman winners
By Chip Rouse
No. 3 – Billy Vessels, 1952 Heisman Trophy winner, OU halfback (1950-52)
Billy Vessels goes back almost two generations, but is one of the greatest Oklahoma football players of all-time.
He played on Oklahoma’s first national championship team in 1950, contributing over 1,000 yards from scrimmage, most of it on the ground, and 15 touchdowns. He ran for a touchdown with under five minutes to go in the annual game with Texas that enabled the Sooners to come from behind for a 14-13 win over their hated archrival and stay undefeated.
Vessels injured his knee in Oklahoma’s second game of his junior season in 1951. That injury later caused him to miss the final five games that season. According to the “Encyclopedia of Oklahoma History and Culture,” Vessels “spent the summer of 1952 running barefoot on the sand of the Arkansas River near Cleveland (his hometown in Texas) to rebuild his knee and recapture his spot in the Oklahoma backfield.”
It worked, because the hard-running Sooner halfback was in peak form his senior season.
In 1952, Vessels final season at OU and the year he became the school’s first Heisman Trophy winner, he rushed for 1,072 yards, averaging 6.4 yards per carry, and scored 17 touchdowns on the ground and 18 total. He rushed for 100 or more yards in seven of the Sooners’ 10 games that season.
The Sooners were a combined 26-4-1 in the three seasons Vessels played for Oklahoma.
One of the best running backs in the country at the time he played, Vessel’s 2,153 rushing yards ranks 24th on the Oklahoma career list. Only six Sooners in history, however, averaged better than Vessels’ 6.22 yards per carry for his career.
Vessels achieved All-America status in his 1952 Heisman season, his final year at Oklahoma. He was the No. 2 overall pick, selected by the Baltimore Colts, in the 1953 NFL Draft. He elected to play in Canada, however, signing with the Edmonton Eskimos for one season. He later did play for the Colts in the NFL, but for just one year, in 1956.
Oklahoma’s first Heisman Trophy winner died in 2001 in Coral Gables, Florida, at the age of 70.