Bud Wilkinson's great Oklahoma Sooner teams of the 1950s will always be remembered as the glory years of Oklahoma football and for the long history of success that was to follow. Wilkinson's great Oklahoma teams produced three national championships, an NCAA record 47 consecutive wins and 15 consensus All-Americans.
But as dominant as those 1950s Oklahoma teams were, a good number of the players believed to be the greatest of all-time to wear the Sooner uniform played in the 2000s.
That is also a big reason why a group of college football writers and editors at USA Today Sports included five former Sooners on the publication's All-2000s Team in an article published recently. Two Sooners (RB Adrian Peterson and S Roy Williams) were named to the first team, and three others (QB Baker Mayfield, C Creed Humphrey and LB Teddy Lehman) to the second team.
Oklahoma and Alabama shared the most overall selections with five each. LSU and Miami (FL) were next with four apiece. Nineteen different schools were represented on the first team, with six earning multiple selections. Alabama and Miami led all schools in the number of first-team selections with three each.
This past month, Athlon Sports published an article naming the 10 greatest Oklahoma football players of all-time. Six of the 10 played in the 2000s. Similarly, the SEC recently ranked the seven best Sooner players of all-time, and four of the seven are from the 2000s.
When you scan through the names of the first- and second-team selections and you consider the number of Heisman Trophy winners, Hall of Famers (both college and pro), and NFL superstars who did not make the list, it is all the more impressive that five Sooners were among the 51 names that comprised USA Today's 2000s All-Millennium Team.
For example, some of the Oklahoma greats who did not make the cut include Heisman QB Sam Bradford, DT Tommie Harris, DB Derrick Strait and return specialist Antonio Perkins.
Oklahoma's USA Today All-2000s First-Team selections
Peterson set an Oklahoma program and then-NCAA record, rushing for 1,925 yards and 15 touchdowns as a freshman in 2004. He finished second that same season to QB Matt Leinart of USC in the Heisman Trophy voting.
Peterson finished his career at Oklahoma with 4,045 rushing yards and 41 touchdowns, the fourth-most in Sooner history. He was a first-round selection of the Minnesota Vikings with the seventhoverall pick in the 2007 NFL Draft and led the NFL in rushing three different times in a 15-year pro career.
Williams was a dynamic, hard-hitting defensive back who played a prominent role on Oklahoma's 2000 national championship team. He was a unanimous All-America selection in 2001 and was awarded the Bronko Nagurski Trophy as college football's best defensive player and the Jim Thorpe Award as the country's best defensive back that same year.
Williams ended his four-year Oklahoma career with 287 tackles and 41 tackles for loss, an OU record for a defensive back. He was selected by the Dallas Cowboys with the eighth overall pick in the first round of the 2002 NFL Draft and played nine years in the NFL.
OU All-2000s Second-Team selections
Mayfield is considered by some as the best Oklahoma player of all-time, an especially high honor given all the great players who have been at OU. He spent three seasons at Oklahoma after transferring following his freshman season at Texas Tech.
He was a two-time First-Team All-American and two-time NCAA passing leader while at OU and led the Sooners to two College Football Playoff appearances. Mayfield won the Heisman Trophy in 2017 and was the No. 1 overall NFL Draft pick by the Cleveland Browns in 2018. He ranks second on the Oklahoma career passing leaderboard with 12,292 passing yards and 119 touchdowns. He is currently the starting quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and is in his ninth NFL season.
Former Auburn quarterback Cam Newton got the first-team nod over Mayfield from USA Today.
A native Oklahoman, Humphrey was the starting center for the Sooners from his freshman through junior seasons. He achieved All-America status every season. Humphrey was a member of the Oklahoma offensive line that won the Joe Moore Award in 2018 as college football's best offensive line, and as a junior in 2020, he did not allow a sack on 401 pass plays.
The Kansas City Chiefs selected Humphrey in the second round of the 2021 NFL Draft, and he was named first-team All-NFL in each of the last two seasons.
Lehman played for Bob Stoops' Oklahoma teams from 2000-03 and was a member of the Sooners' 2000 national championship team. His senior season, in 2003, he was recognized as the winner of the Butkus Award as the top linebacker in college football, as well as the Chuck Bednarik Award as defensive player of the year.
Lehman was selected by the Detroit Lions in the second round of the 2004 NFL Draft. He played five NFL seasons.
Add us as a preferred source on Google