Pair of OU stars included on The Athletic’s top 25 players

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…

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Publish date : 2025-05-24 12:02:00

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