So, now that Sam Bradford has said he has played his last game at OU, it is time to seriously consider the design of the trophy.
About a year ago, a Facebook group popped up with the title "Sam Bradford's Heisman Park Statue Should be Upside Down!" Click here to Join . The now infamous Jenny Carlson, whom Mike Gundy assured her and everyone else on the planet that he was 40 and a man, when she wrote his starting QB, Bobby Reed, was mentally week after observing his mother feeding him chicken, also included it on her blog, here .
While initially it was more a fun joke than anything serious, you have to ask yourself the question, "What is Sam Bradford's signature play?"
It is a hard question to answer because despite the immense amount of great and wonderful moments Sam Bradford had, there are hardly any you would call a signature play.
If you look at Tebow, You can find plenty. Third down and short and he runs over someone, or some two or some three, to get the first down. It happens plenty and I doubt any future Tebow statues are going to show him in his pocket pose.
Bradford's games, mostly due to his effectiveness, were seldom close and actually never did he lead his team on a final game winning drive, not that there were many opportunities.
There are no pictures of him holding the Golden Hat or the Crystal ball.
When I try to look for one play that encapsulates who Sam Bradford was as a player at OU, The OSU flip hits my mind first and foremost every last time.
It was third and nine and the Sooners were already up four. So a fourth-down field goal still would of kept them up a touchdown. Everything a QB is taught tells him to slide or throw it away when there is no receiver open in that situation.
Bradford did not do either. He scrambled then he gave up his body and went airborne, trying to dive for a touchdown like a running back or wide receiver trying to clip the pylon.
Linebacker Orie Lemon must of thought Christmas came early with Bradford going Delta right in front of him after being stiff-armed by Bradford earlier in the game.
The collision caught all-everything tight end Jermaine Gresham's eye, "I thought it was a gangling deer got hit by a car or something, All I saw was his legs go in the air."
While he came up short and got knocked out of bounds at the one, Bradford and the Sooners did cross the goal line the next play after a botched snap.
If not for the effort OU would of never got the touchdown according to wide Receiver Manuel Johnson, "Coach said that was a big play because if he would have just threw it out of bounds, he probably would’t have went for it on fourth down. He probably would have went with the field goal. But he got it down there to the 1, and with that effort I think coach was like, I can’t kick a field goal since he made that effort."
It was the turning point in a game were both teams were trading punches and helped OU get the decisive victory it needed to break the three-way tie for the South Division in 2008 which sent OU to both the Conference And National Championship games.
It was the tenth 300-yard game of Bradford's Sophomore season.
The OSU flip also encompasses Bradford's career at OU. He always did his job well and put his team in a good position to win. You cannot blame any of OU's losses on Bradford, he came to play week in and week out.
Yet, the team came up short both against Texas and in the National championship, always getting pushed out of bounds before he crossed the goal line of the teams biggest goals despite giving it everything he had.
Bob Stoops' knew what a treasure he had in Bradford. “His heart, his toughness, his competitiveness is second to none,” Stoops said.
So please if you want to make the statue truly show what Slinging Sammy Bradford was all about, make his statue upside down because no play told us more about Bradford than the Fearless Flip.