Oklahoma football: With which 4 all-time Sooners would you like to be quarantined?
By Chip Rouse
Jack Mildren
Arguably the most underrated player in Sooner football history, Jack Mildren was the first in a long line of Oklahoma wishbone quarterbacks. Barry Switzer called him the “father of the wishbone. He was a runner, a passer and a great leader,” Switzer said following Mildren’s death in 2008. “We recruited a lot of superstars out of the state of Texas, and Jack was the first one.”
Mildren was the quintessence of a running quarterback, a great athlete with excellent speed, toughness and played with physicality (he had 4.5 40-yard speed and was a hurdles champion in high school), and he also could throw the football, according to Switzer.
Switzer was asked recently, in an interview with Sooner Spectator magazine, which of the quarterbacks who played for him would fit the best in an offense like the Sooners run today.
"“Probably (Jack) Mildren,” Switzer said. “He always wanted to throw the ball more but didn’t because we ran the wishbone much of the time.”"
Mildren’s rushing totals were modest his first two seasons (just over 300 yards both years) as the Sooners’ starting quarterback, but in 1971, his senior year, he broke loose for 1,289 yards on the ground and 20 touchdowns.
That was the same year of the Oklahoma-Nebraska “Game of the Century,” which in 2019 ESPN ranked as the greatest college football game of all-time. The Sooners lost that game 35-31, but Mildren rushed for a team-high 130 yards and two touchdowns and completed five of 10 passes for a couple more scores.
The Baltimore Colts liked Mildren’s athleticism so much they drafted him in the second round of the 1971 NFL Draft and converted the former QB to defensive back. He played in 23 games in three NFL seasons.
In the early 1990s, Mildren was elected Lieutenant Governor of the state of Oklahoma. He died of stomach cancer in 2008 at the age of 58.