When Bob Stoops became the head coach of the Oklahoma football program before the 1999 season, he took over a program that had clearly seen better days.
The 1990s were not kind to OU football, and it was Stoops’ job to get the program back to the winning ways of Bud Wilkinson and Barry Switzer.
As Sooner fans know, Stoops resurrected the program, winning a national championship in just his second year. Since then, OU has been back in the national championship picture nearly every year.
Strong quarterback play has been a hallmark of the great Sooner teams of the past, and it was no different under Stoops, or his successor, Lincoln Riley, and will likely stay that way under Riley’s successor, Brent Venables.
OU had long had success with the Wishbone offense and, therefore, valued quarterbacks with quick feet and quick decision-making. But when Stoops arrived in ’99, the Sooners began running a more spread-out, modern style of offense that relied on throwing the football down the field as well as the power running of old. The quarterbacks of the last twenty-plus years all litter the OU passing record books due to this change in philosophy, but who was the best since 1999?
Let’s start with a couple of guidelines. First, this list only includes quarterbacks who started at least one game at QB in a Sooner uniform, so some of those lovable backups over the years will be omitted. Second, these rankings were determined based primarily on on-field performance, but also off-field impact.
Quarterbacks are usually the leaders of their team and faces of a program to the fanbase and the nation. What a player means to a program should be taken into account as well. Lastly, Dillon Gabriel, the presumed 2022 starter under center in Year 1 of the Venables era, was not included in these rankings, as he has yet to start a game for Oklahoma.
So, without further delay, here are all of the Sooners’ starting quarterbacks from 1999 to 2021, ranked from worst to first.