OU football: Unassuming all-American Quinton Carter

OU’s best defensive player this season has been Jeremy Beal. Behind Beal would come cornerback Jamell Fleming. Linebacker Travis Lewis has had his moments, particularly in the Big 12 championship game.

But the all-American on the Sooner defense is safety Quinton Carter. The senior from Las Vegas was named all-American by The Associated Press and the American Football Coaches Association. And while his selections came as a surprise, it’s hard to find anyone not pleased with Carter’s honors.

Carter has won all kinds of awards for his community service — founded a nonprofit charitable foundation, mentors at-risk kids, supports in-need dads, conducts football camps — and when asked by our gal Jenni Carlson how he can find time to get so much done while also going to school and playing football, Carter said, “I don’t play video games.”

What goes around comes around, and Carter now has awards on the gridiron to match those in the community.

“It’s a wonderful feeling,” Carter said of the all-American honors, ”to know that a lot of great players are out there who worked so hard, to go down in history with our program, all the great players (pictured) on the wall. It’s a loss-of-word feeling.”