Alma mater full of pride

OKLAHOMA CITY – Sam Bradford’s high school coach stared at the TV, chewing his nails and waiting for the announcement.

When he and about a dozen others heard the name “Sam,” they roared so loudly no one could hear the last name. It didn’t matter.

It was a night to celebrate for Bob Wilson, Bradford’s high school coach at Putnam City North, where he worked with the Oklahoma quarterback who is now a Heisman Trophy winner.

“It felt like right before a state championship game,” Wilson said.

Within seconds of Bradford’s big win, Wilson received a text from a coaching friend: “He’s a stud,” the coach wrote about Bradford, who played for Wilson’s Panthers from 2003-05.

Yep, they’re proud of Bradford at his alma mater.

“You just fight back the emotions and the tears,” Wilson said. “You think that maybe you had a small part somewhere” in his success. “This kid was so far along when we got him, he had such a great background with his folks and such a great family, he was pretty well grounded.

“It makes you feel good that sometimes good guys win. To see that everything you talk about as a coach — be disciplined, do things right on and off the field, stay away from people who aren’t going to help you to be successful, care about people and have lifelong friends, do all those things, and a kid does that and he wins the Heisman? It doesn’t get any better.”

Bradford, a sophomore, has posted gaudy statistics for No. 2 Oklahoma (12-1), passing for 4,464 yards and 48 touchdowns this season. Bradford’s high school numbers weren’t quite as flashy, but they were impressive.

He was a rare three-year starter for North, which plays in Class 6A, the highest level of competition in Oklahoma. Bradford received All-State honors after passing for 2,422 yards and 19 touchdowns as a senior. The season before, he threw for 1,980 yards and 16 touchdowns and led the Panthers to the 6A semifinals.

“What we really tried to push hard after his junior year was that he could play on the high Division I level,” Wilson said. “A lot of college coaches came through. I told them, ‘If you’re asking my opinion, it’s this, he’s either going to be playing for you, or you’re going to be playing against him. … I think that’s a decision you’ve got to make.’ That’s the way we felt.”

Bradford didn’t excel in only football. He starred in basketball and golf at North and graduated in the upper 10 percent of his class, with a 4.2 grade-point average and a 27 on his ACT test.

“It’s wonderful to have that guy on your football team, but you miss him in your school as much as you miss him on the field, because he’s just a great kid,” said John Murphy, an assistant principal at North.

Murphy oversees a class called “Service Learning,” in which students help tutor children at nearby elementary schools. Bradford participated, and in an essay he submitted to Murphy, he said it had been his favorite class at North.

“I felt like that said so much about Sam,” Murphy said, “because some people might have thought his favorite thing to do was be a great football star or a basketball star. But he said his favorite class was ‘Service Learning’ … because that’s the kind of guy he is. He’s a servant.

“You can take away all his athletic ability, and he’s just a great guy. You’d want your daughter to marry him.”

Bradford will soon join Steve Owens (1969), Billy Sims (1978), Jason White (2003) and the late Billy Vessels, the 1952 Heisman winner, in having a statue of himself placed in Oklahoma’s Heisman Park, across the street from Owen Field in Norman.

“I don’t think I can even describe it,” Bradford said. “It’s a great feeling. It’s hard to consider myself the same as Jason White, someone I grew up watching, idolizing.

“That we’re in an elite group together, it’s hard for me to understand.”