Oklahoma football: With which 4 all-time Sooners would you like to be quarantined?

Tommy McDonald

My whole fascination with Oklahoma football began in 1956. I was nine years old then, and Tommy McDonald was the first college football player I associated with. He played halfback for Oklahoma, and at that time OU was one of the few college teams you were able to watch on network television. A lot of that, I suspect, had to do with the fact that the Sooners were the reigning national champions.

The games were all in black and white then, and for the longest time I thought that Oklahoma wore black jerseys. McDonald’s name was called out a lot by the network play-by-play announcer (if I remember correctly, the great Lindsey Nelson called some of the Oklahoma games on NBC).

In 1956, his senior season, McDonald led the Sooners with 853 rushing yards and was the No. 1 receiver with 282 receiving yards. To me, it seemed that McDonald was the OU offense. Quite a few other folks felt that way too because he was named the winner of the Maxwell Award, presented to the country’s most outstanding college football player.

McDonald went on to play 12 seasons in the National Football League, where he was converted to wide receiver. I continued to follow my favorite college player in the NFL, where he was a six-time Pro-Bowler and twice First-Team All Pro. His career continued to blossom as a pro. He led the NFL in receiving yards in 1961 and twice led the league in receiving touchdowns (1958, 1961).

He played on two national championship teams at Oklahoma and won an NFL championship with the 1960 Philadelphia Eagles.

In 1982, McDonald authored a biography titled, “They Pay Me to Catch Footballs.”

Incredibly, McDonald never lost a football game in his three seasons playing at Oklahoma. The Sooners were 31-0 during that time. He was Mr. Football to me as a youth and represented everything about the game.

McDonald died in 2018 at the age of 84.