Oklahoma football: Ranking the Sooners six Heisman winners
By Chip Rouse
Last week, we took a forward-looking view of who on the 2018 Oklahoma football roster might be worthy of Heisman consideration in the coming season.
Today, we’re looking back over our shoulder at the Sooners’ six Heisman winners and ranking them based on their performance the year they won college football’s most prestigious individual award.
In the first 74 years of Oklahoma football, three players from OU were awarded the coveted Heisman Trophy. It took just 15 years (from 2004 to 2017) for the next three Sooners, all quarterbacks, to walk away with college football’s highest individual honor.
Baker Mayfield became the sixth and most recent Oklahoma Sooner to win the Heisman Trophy, winning by a landslide last season, drawing 657 more votes than the next closest challenger. Mayfield was one of three Sooner Heisman winners who were finalists for the award in back-to-back years.
Jason White, the 2003 Heisman winner, finished third the following year behind teammate Adrian Peterson, who finished second, and USC quarterback Matt Leinart. Billy Sims won the Heisman following a sensational 1978 season, but finished a distant second to fellow running back Charles White of USC in 1979.
Mayfield reversed the process, winning the Heisman in his second year as a finalist after finishing third in 2016. Another Sooner joined Mayfield as a Heisman finalist in 2016. Wide receiver Dede Westbrook was fourth in the Heisman voting that year.
Oklahoma’s six Heisman winners ranks third among schools who have had players win the award. Notre Dame and Ohio State share the top spot, with seven Heisman winners each.
In the 84 years the Heisman Trophy has been presented, 25 OU players have finished in the top 10 of the Heisman voting.
Now the fun part. if you were drafting the six Oklahoma Heisman winners to your team, in which order would you select them? Here is how we would go about that formidable task: