Oklahoma football: Josh Heupel, Roy Williams on 2022 HOF ballot
By Chip Rouse
Two former Oklahoma football players are among those on the ballot for the 2022 class of the College Football Hall of Fame.
Former Sooner and NFL safety Roy Williams and Josh Heupel, quarterback of the 2000 national championship OU team and later the Sooner offensive coordinator under head coach Bob Stoops, are among 78 nominees from the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision on the 2022 HOF ballot.
Heupel was one of Stoops’ first recruits when he took the head coaching job at Oklahoma in 1999. Heupel transferred to OU from tiny Snow College in Ephraim, Utah. He quarterbacked Stoops’ first Sooner team to a 7-5 record, and the following year led OU to a perfect 13-0 record and the school’s seventh and most recent national championship.
In 2000, Heupel was runner-up in the voting for the Heisman Trophy and was the first Oklahoma quarterback since Jack Mildren in 1971 to receive All-American honors.
From 2011-14, he was the Sooners offensive coordinator. He was head coach at Central Florida from 2018-20 and 2021 will be his first season as the new head coach at Tennessee.
Williams also played on the 2000 national championship team as a teammate of Heupel. His next season, as a junior, he won the Bronko Nagurski Trophy as the nation’s top defensive player. He was a unanimous All-America selection that same season and was No. 7 in the Heisman voting.
Williams declared early for the 2002 NFL Draft and was a first-round pick of the Dallas Cowboys, the eighth player selected overall.
The announcement of the 2022 Hall of Fame class will be made in early 2022.
Bob Stoops will be inducted into the College Hall of Fame class of 2021 on Dec. 7 during the National Football Foundation’s annual awards dinner in Las Vegas.