Oklahoma football: Ranking the all-time, top-10 Sooner QBs
By Chip Rouse
No. 5 — Josh Heupel, Oklahoma quarterback (1999-2000)
These days, we associate Josh Heupel more with being an offensive coordinator, which he was at Oklahoma for four seasons and at Missouri for two, and now the head coach at the University of Central Florida. He also served as an assistant coach under Bob Stoops for six seasons, working with the quarterbacks.
What some may have forgotten was that he also was the starting quarterback for the Sooners in Stoops’ first two seasons as head coach and led a prolific passing attack that changed the entire look of Oklahoma football. The Sooners finished the year a perfect 13-0 season in 2000, including an improbable national championship.
Heupel transferred to Oklahoma from Weber State University in Utah, and took over the quarterback duties in Stoops’ inaugural season at OU in 1999. He threw 500 passes that season (more than the Oklahoma teams in the 1970s and ’80s would throw in a decade) and completed over 60 percent of them for nearly 3,500 yards and 30 touchdowns.
Heupel passed for more than 300 yards in 14 games in his two seasons as the Sooner quarterback. Only two other QBs in OU history have had more 300-yard games (Landry Jones with 27 and Baker Mayfield with 20).
A consensus All-American in 2000 and Associated Press Player of the Year, Heupel was the runner-up to Florida State quarterback Chris Weinke in the Heisman voting that year. The Oklahoma QB got a measure of revenge, however, when the Sooners defeated Weinke and the Florida State Seminoles for the 2000 national championship.