The Oklahoma Sooners have had more success than just about every other college football program during the 21st century. With a few exceptions, very few teams have been better than OU since 1999.
Of course, it was after a dismal decade from 1989 to 1998, when the Sooners sunk to unprecedented lows, that new athletic director Joe Castiglione hired Florida defensive coordinator Bob Stoops to right the ship in Norman. When Stoops took the reins before the 1999 season, he set Oklahoma on a path that it’s still on today.
The Sooners won the national championship in Year 2 for Stoops during the 2000 season, and they have captured a bevy of conference championships over the last 26 seasons. They’ve been one of college football’s premier programs of the last quarter-century.
Bruce Feldman, who covers college football for The Athletic, took on the daunting task of ranking the 25 best college football players of the last 25 years. Narrowing down all of the sport’s greats to only 25 since 2000 is extremely difficult, but Feldman took on the challenge.
Just two Sooners made Feldman’s list, beginning with safety Roy Williams, who starred for Oklahoma in the early Stoops years. Feldman has him as the No. 18 player in college football since 2000. He totaled 287 tackles, 34 TFLs, 9 INTs and 44 PBUs overall in his career and was stellar during the 2001 season, racking up 107 tackles, 14 TFLs, 5 INTs and 22 PBUs.
“A standout on the Sooners’ 2000 national title team, the 6-1, 220-pound California native set a BCS national title game record for most tackles by a defensive back with 12 as Oklahoma shut down Florida State 13-2,” Feldman said. “The next season, as a junior, Williams became the first player to win both the Nagurski Trophy, as the nation’s top defensive player, and the Thorpe Award, honoring the country’s best defensive back. Williams’ signature play happened in the 2001 Red River Rivalry game with Texas pinned deep near its goal with two minutes remaining and OU clinging to a 7-3 lead. Williams crowded the line before the snap, backed up, then blitzed, racing in and leaping over Longhorns running back Brett Robin, nearly swiping the ball out of Chris Simms’ hand. The ball bounced into the hands of Teddy Lehman, who grabbed the fluttering ball and scored to propel Oklahoma to a 14-3 win.”
The other OU player to make the list was quarterback Baker Mayfield, who led the Sooners for the final two years of the Stoops era and the first season under Lincoln Riley. Feldman has him as the No. 14 player in the sport since 2000. He totaled 14,607 passing yards, 131 passing TDs, 1,083 rushing yards and 21 rushing TDs in his career. He had an unbelievable 2017 season when he went off for 4,627 passing yards, 43 passing TDs, 311 rushing yards and 5 rushing TDs.
“Mayfield won the starting job as a walk-on freshman at Texas Tech in 2013 before transferring to Oklahoma, where he also initially walked on,” Feldman said. “He flourished in Lincoln Riley’s system, leading the Sooners to three Big 12 titles and two Playoff bids and finishing in the top four of the Heisman race three years in a row, including winning the award in 2017. Mayfield was at his best when the spotlight was brightest. In his return game to Lubbock, facing all sorts of animosity from the Red Raiders crowd, Mayfield passed for 545 yards and seven TDs (with no INTs) in a 66-59 win to outduel Patrick Mahomes. In 2017, he threw for 386 yards and three TDs, completing 77 percent of his passes in a blowout win at No. 5 Ohio State. He later shredded rival Oklahoma State for 598 passing yards and five TDs in a 62-52 win in Stillwater. He threw for seven TDs and zero picks in two games against top-10 TCU that season and had No. 2 Georgia on the ropes in a 54-48 loss in the CFP semifinal.”
Both Williams and Mayfield have a good argument that they could be ranked higher, as Williams was the engine of one of college football’s best defenses for multiple seasons and has a national championship ring. Mayfield pulled the program out of a lull in the later Stoops years and won more conference championships than he lost conference games. Both players are questionably ranked behind guys like DeVonta Smith, Andrew Luck, Larry Fitzgerald, Terrell Suggs, and Travis Hunter. In fact, Mayfield landed at No. 2 on a very similar list from ESPN last summer. His spot on Feldman’s list feels far too low, especially considering a Heisman Trophy has his name on it and he was a finalist two other times.
While we’re on the subject, plenty more OU players had to have been considered. Quarterbacks include Josh Heupel, Jason White, Sam Bradford, Landry Jones, Kyler Murray and Jalen Hurts. Running backs like Adrian Peterson and DeMarco Murray and pass catchers like Mark Clayton, Malcolm Kelly, Juaquin Iglesias, Jermaine Gresham, Ryan Broyles, Dede Westbrook, and CeeDee Lamb certainly have an argument.
Defensively, it’s tough to argue against the likes of Torrance Marshall, Rocky Calmus, Teddy Lehman, Derrick Strait, Tommie Harris, Dusty Dvoracek, Curtis Lofton and Gerald McCoy. Those OU defenses, especially until Brent Venables left after the 2011 season, were feared across the Big 12 and college football.
Now, with Venables following Stoops and Riley as Oklahoma’s third head coach over the last 26 seasons, it’s time for the Sooners to put more players onto lists like these in the years to come. That starts with a pivotal 2025 season, the 27th season since Castiglione hired Stoops and thereby brought OU Football back to the top of college football.
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