milesl
12/21/2015, 08:08 PM
http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/14389539/an-look-paths-oklahoma-sooners-clemson-tigers-took-college-football-playoff
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:14388134
espn video I can never get to work on this forum
Article also had a long story about Clemson. If you want to read that click the article address above. Milesl
(4) OKLAHOMA
VERSUS
(1) CLEMSON
The Sooners and Tigers started the year on the outside of the top 10 looking in. They end the year squaring off for a shot at the title
The paths for Clemson and Oklahoma to the College Football Playoff were relatively similar: score a ton of points and ride the arm (and legs) of their signal caller. But the paths taken by Deshaun Watson and Baker Mayfield to college football stardom couldn't have been more different. This time two years ago, Watson was the No. 1 QB prospect in the nation; Mayfield was a walk-on for Texas Tech who wound up winning the starting job and Big 12 Freshman of the Year.
Then Watson suffered through a sub-par freshman season at Clemson with a bum knee then a torn ACL, while Mayfield transferred after not being offered a scholarship and sat out a year at Oklahoma. But during their bouts with adversity, both quarterbacks had something in common: coaches who believed in them. On New Year's Eve, in the Capital One Orange Bowl (4 p.m. ET, ESPN), their paths will cross for the first time, and they will share one more thing -- a shot to play for a national championship.
Don’t count out Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield
Playing against the No. 1 team won't faze the Sooners' latest hero -- he's used to being underestimated
by Elizabeth Merrill
TENNESSEE'S PUBLIC-ADDRESS announcer has just declared that a decibel record has been set at Neyland Stadium, which makes sense because Baker Mayfield and his Oklahoma Sooners can't hear a damn thing. The crowd is so jacked up that in the first quarter, the Vols' coach, Butch Jones, had to wave his arms in the air to remind fans to quiet down when his offense is on the field. But Mayfield gets no reprieve. For three quarters plus, he is chased and harassed, and the roars only grow louder.
It's his second game as the Sooners' starting quarterback, and people in Oklahoma aren't sure what to make of him yet. Is he the fun-loving ringleader from a dance video that went viral last spring? (It's gotten nearly a quarter-million hits, which actually freaks out Mayfield.) Maybe he's a cocksure gunslinger who'll do anything to win? "I'm feelin' real dangerous," Mayfield says whenever someone asks him how he's doing, quoting his favorite line from American Sniper.
And still this question: Does Baker Mayfield even belong here? His whole football life, he has struggled to find his place. The Sooners had already rejected him once. He went on a visit to Oklahoma four years ago, but when he stood in a hallway with three assistant coaches, and their eyes sized him up, Mayfield's dad, a former QB at Houston, knew that look; he knew it was over. Nobody would return James Mayfield's calls after that. His son was too small.
But Baker has grown as tough as titanium from all the snubs. He's grown literally too: a couple of inches to 6-foot-1 (allegedly). And now he is here, trying to lead the Sooners to an unlikely comeback in a deafening Tennessee stadium. "Stay in the moment," his 32-year-old offensive coordinator, Lincoln Riley, tells him on the sideline throughout the game. "Don't worry about what's happened before." His dad, hidden in the mass of orange and white in the stands, is worried. He doesn't think the Sooners can win, especially when they're down 17-3 in the fourth quarter. But then, he didn't see Baker winking and smiling on TV as he was warming up at halftime.
"Interacting with him on the sidelines when he'd come over," Riley says later, "you'd think we'd scored 30 points."
That's the unwavering optimist side to Mayfield. There's this side too: his relentless -- maybe even reckless -- drive to win. Still down by two touchdowns with less than nine minutes to go, center Ty Darlington hurts his knee and is lying in the grass, punching the ground in pain and frustration. Mayfield leans over and talks in the senior captain's ear.
"Get up," he tells Darlington, along with a few expletives. "We need you. You're staying in the game."
Darlington is incredulous -- he's hurt badly enough that he'll miss the next game -- but he lumbers to the line. On the next play, Mayfield scrambles and fires a touchdown pass to Samaje Perine. Mayfield throws another touchdown strike to tie the score with 40 seconds to go, and Oklahoma goes on to win in double overtime.
Sooners coach Bob Stoops hugs his quarterback and calls it one of his favorite wins ever, and Mayfield struts to the locker room and does the Dougie while his teammates chant his name.
It's the first glimpse of what the Sooners -- and their quarterback -- could become.
THERE WAS A time, just a few years ago, when Baker Mayfield looked beat. He'd poured his guts out at Lake Travis High School in Austin, Texas, leading the Cavaliers to a 25-2 record and a state championship over two seasons as a starter. But he might as well have been invisible to recruiters. The months kept passing, and coaches weren't calling.
His father tried to use every connection he had. He had a friend call Texas, and when James Mayfield was informed that the Longhorns already had five scholarship quarterbacks, he fumed.
"Tell Mack he has five quarterbacks who couldn't play at Lake Travis!" James told the friend.
Rice, Florida Atlantic, New Mexico, Army and Washington State were interested, and they eventually offered scholarships. Mayfield figured, screw it, he'd go to Florida Atlantic. James would have none of it. He reminded his son of his dream of playing big-time college football.
"[My dad] was the one who kind of sat me down," Baker says. "We actually got into a fight about it. [He said] I needed to walk on." Baker hated the idea -- "It was almost insulting to me that I needed to walk on," he says -- but ultimately he'd follow his father's advice.
Fellow Lake Travis alum Michael Brewer, who was a quarterback at Texas Tech at the time, encouraged Mayfield to walk on in Lubbock. The Red Raiders had just hired Kliff Kingsbury, who was Johnny Manziel's offensive coordinator at Texas A&M. Mayfield and Manziel have drawn comparisons because of their scrambling ability and penchant for fun, and Kingsbury would run a wide-open offense like the one Mayfield enjoyed at Lake Travis, so it seemed like a good fit.
http://a.espncdn.com/photo/2015/1221/r38049_800x450_16-9.jpg
At Texas Tech, Mayfield started way earlier than anyone planned, playing in the opening game of his true freshman season in 2013. Brewer had hurt his back and couldn't suit up, so Mayfield stepped in and threw for 413 yards and four touchdowns (rushing for another) in a win over SMU. He led the Red Raiders to a 5-0 record but suffered a hairline fracture below his knee at Kansas in October. Things went downhill from there. James claims that Kingsbury pigeonholed his son as injury-prone and wouldn't talk to Mayfield for weeks while he was injured. (Texas Tech declined to make Kingsbury or any of his assistants available for this story.)
Mayfield came back after a month and started a couple of games, both losses, and Kingsbury announced that he was opening up the quarterback job heading into the team's bowl game. Around the same time, Mayfield, who was barred from eating at the training table because he was a walk-on, found out he still wouldn't be guaranteed a scholarship for the next season. He called his dad.
"What do you want me to do?" James asked.
"I don't want you to do anything," Baker told him. "I want to get out of here."
Texas Tech would later refuse to release Mayfield to transfer within the Big 12, which meant he likely would have to sit the 2014 season without a scholarship. He'd also lose a year of eligibility.
"I think Kliff's a punk," James says. "I know it's like saying your mama wears boots or something. It wasn't about the scholarship. We didn't care about the damn scholarship. It was the way it was done. It was insulting. It was an amateur deal."
ALTHOUGH HE WAS in the University of Texas' backyard, Mayfield's favorite team growing up was always Oklahoma. His dad was friends with some old Barry Switzer assistants, and he'd take Baker and his older brother, Matt, to Norman at least twice a season to cheer on the Sooners. There's a picture of Baker as a kid, mugging for the camera in his white-and-crimson Quentin Griffin jersey. He idolized Griffin, Mark Clayton and Jason White.
Despite getting the cold shoulder from the Sooners in high school, Mayfield figured he'd try again, now that he was the Big 12 Offensive Freshman of the Year.
You don’t see many guys around the country like Baker. He just doesn’t hold back.”
- Bob Stoops
And so in January 2014, Mayfield registered for classes in Norman. Stoops says he heard rumors that Mayfield was coming but wasn't sure. (It is against NCAA rules for a school to recruit or even encourage a transfer without permission from the athlete's current school.) When Stoops held the team's first meeting, in March, Mayfield walked up and introduced himself, and Stoops welcomed him.
"You'll have every opportunity everyone else has," Stoops told him.
The idea of going to Oklahoma, on paper, didn't seem too smart. Trevor Knight was just coming off a Sugar Bowl MVP performance and a victory over the Crimson Tide. Another quarterback, Cody Thomas, had been recruited by the likes of LSU, Notre Dame and Alabama.
But Mayfield was undaunted. He made a good enough impression for Oklahoma to offer him a scholarship even as he sat in 2014, and he watched the Sooners go 8-5. They were desperate for a spark. They needed more toughness -- physical and mental.
Mayfield, with his curly brown hair and boyish grin, might not look the part, but by the time fall camp started, his teammates knew he had what it took to lead them. It also helped that he had an uncanny ability to rescue plays on the fly and make things happen -- Stoops says that's why he gave him the starting job in August. He's different from the star quarterbacks Oklahoma has had in the past, on the field and off. Sam Bradford and White, who have statues outside of Memorial Stadium, didn't scramble and run the field like their hair was on fire. They didn't look as if they were having near the fun Mayfield is, either.
"You don't see many guys around the country like Baker," Stoops says. "He just doesn't hold back. That's his personality every day, and he just lets it go. You love it. But it has to be natural within a person, and it is with him."
Maybe the best example of that came in OU's final game of the regular season, against Oklahoma State: On a handoff in the second quarter, running back Joe Mixon got swarmed in the backfield trying to go left, so he cut back toward Mayfield. While most quarterbacks would have stood idly by, Mayfield sprang into action as a lead blocker, throwing the block that sprang Mixon for a 66-yard touchdown.
"I ran down the field after that play and told him he was a legend," Ty Darlington says. "Our relationship is very much that we talk trash to each other in every opportunity, but I had to give him props for that. That was awesome."
Mayfield's three additional touchdowns -- two in the air, one on the ground -- helped the Sooners to a 58-23 victory and got them the conference championship. After the game, Mayfield was so excited that he did a Lambeau Leap into the stands, his body barely making it up the concrete wall.
A few days after the game, Darlington says it: Mayfield is a badass.
"But don't tell him I said that," he adds.
ON DEC. 7, one day after the Sooners found out they'd made the College Football Playoff, Mayfield was in Arkansas accepting the Burlsworth Trophy, which goes to the top college football player who began his career as a walk-on. It was in the airport, on his way back to Norman, that he found out he wouldn't be invited to New York as one of the finalists for the Heisman.
No. 4 Oklahoma
FPI Chance to Beat:
Clemson 62.8%
Alabama 57.2%
Michigan State 73.3%
Mayfield had done everything to put himself in the conversation, throwing for 3,389 yards with 35 touchdowns and just five interceptions, and running for 420 yards and seven touchdowns.
Among those stunned by the snub: Mayfield's roommate, fullback Jaxon Uhles. Uhles, also a walk-on, was so confident in Mayfield that before the season, before the quarterback had thrown a pass, he kept asking him where he was going to put his Heisman when he won it at the end of the year. Mayfield finally played along, and they decided they'd place it on the bookshelf of their home, near Richard the Chicken, a kitchen ornament-turned-video game trophy.
"I thought he kind of got hosed by that deal," says Hank Carter, his high school coach at Lake Travis. "He took it in stride and just said his focus was on getting ready for the playoff game. He said all the right things, but I would imagine deep down, he probably felt slighted."
For Oklahoma, it probably wasn't the worst news. After all, Mayfield is at his best in these situations. He will look at the New Year's Eve semifinal game against No. 1 Clemson and consider the Sooners the underdogs, even though they're favored by more than a field goal.
"I've had a lot of people doubting me my whole life," Mayfield says. "Middle school, I was backup quarterback; freshman year, I was backup until the other guy got hurt ... I have a very big chip on my shoulder just because people said I couldn't do it. And that's ultimately what fuels me."
And so on Dec. 31, he will run onto the field with his blue-chip teammates, and his short, muscular legs will take off, sticking it to every coach who made the mistake of sizing him up.
http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=espn:14388134
espn video I can never get to work on this forum
Article also had a long story about Clemson. If you want to read that click the article address above. Milesl
(4) OKLAHOMA
VERSUS
(1) CLEMSON
The Sooners and Tigers started the year on the outside of the top 10 looking in. They end the year squaring off for a shot at the title
The paths for Clemson and Oklahoma to the College Football Playoff were relatively similar: score a ton of points and ride the arm (and legs) of their signal caller. But the paths taken by Deshaun Watson and Baker Mayfield to college football stardom couldn't have been more different. This time two years ago, Watson was the No. 1 QB prospect in the nation; Mayfield was a walk-on for Texas Tech who wound up winning the starting job and Big 12 Freshman of the Year.
Then Watson suffered through a sub-par freshman season at Clemson with a bum knee then a torn ACL, while Mayfield transferred after not being offered a scholarship and sat out a year at Oklahoma. But during their bouts with adversity, both quarterbacks had something in common: coaches who believed in them. On New Year's Eve, in the Capital One Orange Bowl (4 p.m. ET, ESPN), their paths will cross for the first time, and they will share one more thing -- a shot to play for a national championship.
Don’t count out Oklahoma’s Baker Mayfield
Playing against the No. 1 team won't faze the Sooners' latest hero -- he's used to being underestimated
by Elizabeth Merrill
TENNESSEE'S PUBLIC-ADDRESS announcer has just declared that a decibel record has been set at Neyland Stadium, which makes sense because Baker Mayfield and his Oklahoma Sooners can't hear a damn thing. The crowd is so jacked up that in the first quarter, the Vols' coach, Butch Jones, had to wave his arms in the air to remind fans to quiet down when his offense is on the field. But Mayfield gets no reprieve. For three quarters plus, he is chased and harassed, and the roars only grow louder.
It's his second game as the Sooners' starting quarterback, and people in Oklahoma aren't sure what to make of him yet. Is he the fun-loving ringleader from a dance video that went viral last spring? (It's gotten nearly a quarter-million hits, which actually freaks out Mayfield.) Maybe he's a cocksure gunslinger who'll do anything to win? "I'm feelin' real dangerous," Mayfield says whenever someone asks him how he's doing, quoting his favorite line from American Sniper.
And still this question: Does Baker Mayfield even belong here? His whole football life, he has struggled to find his place. The Sooners had already rejected him once. He went on a visit to Oklahoma four years ago, but when he stood in a hallway with three assistant coaches, and their eyes sized him up, Mayfield's dad, a former QB at Houston, knew that look; he knew it was over. Nobody would return James Mayfield's calls after that. His son was too small.
But Baker has grown as tough as titanium from all the snubs. He's grown literally too: a couple of inches to 6-foot-1 (allegedly). And now he is here, trying to lead the Sooners to an unlikely comeback in a deafening Tennessee stadium. "Stay in the moment," his 32-year-old offensive coordinator, Lincoln Riley, tells him on the sideline throughout the game. "Don't worry about what's happened before." His dad, hidden in the mass of orange and white in the stands, is worried. He doesn't think the Sooners can win, especially when they're down 17-3 in the fourth quarter. But then, he didn't see Baker winking and smiling on TV as he was warming up at halftime.
"Interacting with him on the sidelines when he'd come over," Riley says later, "you'd think we'd scored 30 points."
That's the unwavering optimist side to Mayfield. There's this side too: his relentless -- maybe even reckless -- drive to win. Still down by two touchdowns with less than nine minutes to go, center Ty Darlington hurts his knee and is lying in the grass, punching the ground in pain and frustration. Mayfield leans over and talks in the senior captain's ear.
"Get up," he tells Darlington, along with a few expletives. "We need you. You're staying in the game."
Darlington is incredulous -- he's hurt badly enough that he'll miss the next game -- but he lumbers to the line. On the next play, Mayfield scrambles and fires a touchdown pass to Samaje Perine. Mayfield throws another touchdown strike to tie the score with 40 seconds to go, and Oklahoma goes on to win in double overtime.
Sooners coach Bob Stoops hugs his quarterback and calls it one of his favorite wins ever, and Mayfield struts to the locker room and does the Dougie while his teammates chant his name.
It's the first glimpse of what the Sooners -- and their quarterback -- could become.
THERE WAS A time, just a few years ago, when Baker Mayfield looked beat. He'd poured his guts out at Lake Travis High School in Austin, Texas, leading the Cavaliers to a 25-2 record and a state championship over two seasons as a starter. But he might as well have been invisible to recruiters. The months kept passing, and coaches weren't calling.
His father tried to use every connection he had. He had a friend call Texas, and when James Mayfield was informed that the Longhorns already had five scholarship quarterbacks, he fumed.
"Tell Mack he has five quarterbacks who couldn't play at Lake Travis!" James told the friend.
Rice, Florida Atlantic, New Mexico, Army and Washington State were interested, and they eventually offered scholarships. Mayfield figured, screw it, he'd go to Florida Atlantic. James would have none of it. He reminded his son of his dream of playing big-time college football.
"[My dad] was the one who kind of sat me down," Baker says. "We actually got into a fight about it. [He said] I needed to walk on." Baker hated the idea -- "It was almost insulting to me that I needed to walk on," he says -- but ultimately he'd follow his father's advice.
Fellow Lake Travis alum Michael Brewer, who was a quarterback at Texas Tech at the time, encouraged Mayfield to walk on in Lubbock. The Red Raiders had just hired Kliff Kingsbury, who was Johnny Manziel's offensive coordinator at Texas A&M. Mayfield and Manziel have drawn comparisons because of their scrambling ability and penchant for fun, and Kingsbury would run a wide-open offense like the one Mayfield enjoyed at Lake Travis, so it seemed like a good fit.
http://a.espncdn.com/photo/2015/1221/r38049_800x450_16-9.jpg
At Texas Tech, Mayfield started way earlier than anyone planned, playing in the opening game of his true freshman season in 2013. Brewer had hurt his back and couldn't suit up, so Mayfield stepped in and threw for 413 yards and four touchdowns (rushing for another) in a win over SMU. He led the Red Raiders to a 5-0 record but suffered a hairline fracture below his knee at Kansas in October. Things went downhill from there. James claims that Kingsbury pigeonholed his son as injury-prone and wouldn't talk to Mayfield for weeks while he was injured. (Texas Tech declined to make Kingsbury or any of his assistants available for this story.)
Mayfield came back after a month and started a couple of games, both losses, and Kingsbury announced that he was opening up the quarterback job heading into the team's bowl game. Around the same time, Mayfield, who was barred from eating at the training table because he was a walk-on, found out he still wouldn't be guaranteed a scholarship for the next season. He called his dad.
"What do you want me to do?" James asked.
"I don't want you to do anything," Baker told him. "I want to get out of here."
Texas Tech would later refuse to release Mayfield to transfer within the Big 12, which meant he likely would have to sit the 2014 season without a scholarship. He'd also lose a year of eligibility.
"I think Kliff's a punk," James says. "I know it's like saying your mama wears boots or something. It wasn't about the scholarship. We didn't care about the damn scholarship. It was the way it was done. It was insulting. It was an amateur deal."
ALTHOUGH HE WAS in the University of Texas' backyard, Mayfield's favorite team growing up was always Oklahoma. His dad was friends with some old Barry Switzer assistants, and he'd take Baker and his older brother, Matt, to Norman at least twice a season to cheer on the Sooners. There's a picture of Baker as a kid, mugging for the camera in his white-and-crimson Quentin Griffin jersey. He idolized Griffin, Mark Clayton and Jason White.
Despite getting the cold shoulder from the Sooners in high school, Mayfield figured he'd try again, now that he was the Big 12 Offensive Freshman of the Year.
You don’t see many guys around the country like Baker. He just doesn’t hold back.”
- Bob Stoops
And so in January 2014, Mayfield registered for classes in Norman. Stoops says he heard rumors that Mayfield was coming but wasn't sure. (It is against NCAA rules for a school to recruit or even encourage a transfer without permission from the athlete's current school.) When Stoops held the team's first meeting, in March, Mayfield walked up and introduced himself, and Stoops welcomed him.
"You'll have every opportunity everyone else has," Stoops told him.
The idea of going to Oklahoma, on paper, didn't seem too smart. Trevor Knight was just coming off a Sugar Bowl MVP performance and a victory over the Crimson Tide. Another quarterback, Cody Thomas, had been recruited by the likes of LSU, Notre Dame and Alabama.
But Mayfield was undaunted. He made a good enough impression for Oklahoma to offer him a scholarship even as he sat in 2014, and he watched the Sooners go 8-5. They were desperate for a spark. They needed more toughness -- physical and mental.
Mayfield, with his curly brown hair and boyish grin, might not look the part, but by the time fall camp started, his teammates knew he had what it took to lead them. It also helped that he had an uncanny ability to rescue plays on the fly and make things happen -- Stoops says that's why he gave him the starting job in August. He's different from the star quarterbacks Oklahoma has had in the past, on the field and off. Sam Bradford and White, who have statues outside of Memorial Stadium, didn't scramble and run the field like their hair was on fire. They didn't look as if they were having near the fun Mayfield is, either.
"You don't see many guys around the country like Baker," Stoops says. "He just doesn't hold back. That's his personality every day, and he just lets it go. You love it. But it has to be natural within a person, and it is with him."
Maybe the best example of that came in OU's final game of the regular season, against Oklahoma State: On a handoff in the second quarter, running back Joe Mixon got swarmed in the backfield trying to go left, so he cut back toward Mayfield. While most quarterbacks would have stood idly by, Mayfield sprang into action as a lead blocker, throwing the block that sprang Mixon for a 66-yard touchdown.
"I ran down the field after that play and told him he was a legend," Ty Darlington says. "Our relationship is very much that we talk trash to each other in every opportunity, but I had to give him props for that. That was awesome."
Mayfield's three additional touchdowns -- two in the air, one on the ground -- helped the Sooners to a 58-23 victory and got them the conference championship. After the game, Mayfield was so excited that he did a Lambeau Leap into the stands, his body barely making it up the concrete wall.
A few days after the game, Darlington says it: Mayfield is a badass.
"But don't tell him I said that," he adds.
ON DEC. 7, one day after the Sooners found out they'd made the College Football Playoff, Mayfield was in Arkansas accepting the Burlsworth Trophy, which goes to the top college football player who began his career as a walk-on. It was in the airport, on his way back to Norman, that he found out he wouldn't be invited to New York as one of the finalists for the Heisman.
No. 4 Oklahoma
FPI Chance to Beat:
Clemson 62.8%
Alabama 57.2%
Michigan State 73.3%
Mayfield had done everything to put himself in the conversation, throwing for 3,389 yards with 35 touchdowns and just five interceptions, and running for 420 yards and seven touchdowns.
Among those stunned by the snub: Mayfield's roommate, fullback Jaxon Uhles. Uhles, also a walk-on, was so confident in Mayfield that before the season, before the quarterback had thrown a pass, he kept asking him where he was going to put his Heisman when he won it at the end of the year. Mayfield finally played along, and they decided they'd place it on the bookshelf of their home, near Richard the Chicken, a kitchen ornament-turned-video game trophy.
"I thought he kind of got hosed by that deal," says Hank Carter, his high school coach at Lake Travis. "He took it in stride and just said his focus was on getting ready for the playoff game. He said all the right things, but I would imagine deep down, he probably felt slighted."
For Oklahoma, it probably wasn't the worst news. After all, Mayfield is at his best in these situations. He will look at the New Year's Eve semifinal game against No. 1 Clemson and consider the Sooners the underdogs, even though they're favored by more than a field goal.
"I've had a lot of people doubting me my whole life," Mayfield says. "Middle school, I was backup quarterback; freshman year, I was backup until the other guy got hurt ... I have a very big chip on my shoulder just because people said I couldn't do it. And that's ultimately what fuels me."
And so on Dec. 31, he will run onto the field with his blue-chip teammates, and his short, muscular legs will take off, sticking it to every coach who made the mistake of sizing him up.