Oklahoma football: Introducing the new “Quarterback U”

For several years I have written about how the Oklahoma football program has become the yellow-brick road for quarterback schooling and the place — over the last 20 years, at least — from which a number of the college games best signal callers have come.

Now another reliable, authoritative source has provided credence to what I have been advocating for some time. A Sports Illustrated researcher, Reid Foster, has come up with a formula by which to measure and identify which schools “have the right to brand themselves the modern ‘U'”for each positio n group.

Foster’s findings appear in the April 2020 issue of the popular sports magazine in an article headlined: “Who is the U?” By now you know where I’m going with this. Oklahoma heads the list with the top claim on the quarterback position, with Auburn, Florida State and Louisville in a three-way tie as the runners-up.

The SI analysis examines a decade worth of data, but I belief, at least as far as the quarterback position is concerned, the conclusion would be the same for the first two decades of the 21st century.

Since 2000, Oklahoma has produced four Heisman Trophy winners (Jason White 2003, Sam Bradford 2008, Baker Mayfield 2017 and Kyler Murray 2018) at the quarterback position and two more runners-up (Josh Heupel in 2000 and Jalen Hurts in 2019). Moreover, two of those where in back-to-back years, and the Heisman winners those two years (Mayfield and Murray) went on to become the No. 1 overall draft pick in the 2018 and ’19 NFL Drafts.

Based on SI’s examination of the last 10 seasons of college football, the dominance Alabama established over that time is reflected in its classification as the modern “U” of three different position groups: offensive line, defensive line and running back.

What I find interesting about all of this is, for most of the second half of the last century, especially in the glory years under both Bud Wilkinson and Barry Switzer when the idea of a forward pass was more of an afterthought, Oklahoma was mostly known as a program that produced some of the best running backs in the college game. The Sooners’ first three Heisman winners (Billy Vessels in 1950, Steve Owens in 1969 and Billy Sims in 1978) were all All-American running backs.

With the arrival of Bob Stoops in 1999, quarterback play and the passing game was elevated to an all-new level in what had long been a run-dominated offensive attack. When Stoops brought Lincoln Riley on board in 2015 as offensive coordinator, he felt the Sooners had gotten way from the Air Raid style of offense that had been so successful in the early years of the Stoops coaching era.

We’ve all seen what has happened with Mayfield, Murray and Hurts under the quarterback-whisperer Riley’s tutelage. Oklahoma is 58-10 in the last five seasons and has been to the College Football Playoff in four of those five years.

The common denominator is that successful five-year run: Riley and Oklahoma quarterbacks.