Alright, let’s talk about something I looked into recently – the Oklahoma Sooners and their Heisman winners. It wasn’t for any big project, just personal curiosity kicking in. You know how sometimes you just fall down a rabbit hole?
So, I was watching some college football clips, just messing around online, and the Sooners kept popping up. I remembered they had a pretty strong history, and the thought hit me: “How many Heisman winners did OU actually produce?” I figured it was more than a couple, but I wanted to know for sure.
First thing I did, obviously, was just punch “Oklahoma Heisman winners” into a search engine. Simple enough. Right away, a few names jumped out. I saw Billy Vessels, which rang a faint bell, maybe from some old documentary I half-watched ages ago.
Then I started digging a bit more specifically. I wanted a list, you know? See them all laid out. It wasn’t super hard to find the core group. I started jotting them down as I found them.
My Little Research List
Here’s what I pieced together, going through different sports sites and historical pages:
- Billy Vessels (1952): This was the first one, way back. Pretty cool to see their history goes that far back with the award.
- Steve Owens (1969): Another name from the past. Took a bit for the next one to come along after Vessels.
- Billy Sims (1978): Okay, this name I definitely knew. Remember watching highlights of this guy. Absolute powerhouse.
- Jason White (2003): Jump forward quite a bit. It’s interesting how these things come in waves. I remember watching him play, that arm was something else.
- Sam Bradford (2008): Not too long after White. Seems like OU had a good run in the 2000s with quarterbacks.
- Baker Mayfield (2017): This guy, what a personality. Definitely remember his season.
- Kyler Murray (2018): And then boom, right after Baker! Back-to-back quarterbacks. That’s pretty wild.
So, that’s seven winners. Seven! That’s a seriously impressive number for one school. Seeing them listed out like that really puts it into perspective.
Honestly, the process was pretty straightforward. Just required a bit of clicking around, verifying names and years across a couple of sources to make sure I wasn’t grabbing bad info. Sometimes you find conflicting dates or stats, you know how the internet is. It reminds me of trying to debug code sometimes – you think you’ve found the issue, but then another source tells you something different, and you’re back to square one. Thankfully, this was much easier than that!
It was just a fun little exercise, satisfying that itch of curiosity. Seeing that list, especially the back-to-back winners recently, really highlights OU’s quarterback factory reputation lately. Anyway, that was my little dive into Oklahoma’s Heisman history. Just thought I’d share the process.
