Heisman victor a legend for life

A life will change tonight. Maybe Sam Bradford’s. If not Slingin’ Sam, then Colt McCoy or Tim Tebow, the other guys in this trio with names right out of a Zane Grey novel but with fames right out of a Grantland Rice dispatch and games that Amos Alonzo Stagg never could have conceived.

A name will be called and a life will never be the same.

"From the point I won the Heisman, life changed,” said Steve Owens, OU’s 1969 Heisman Trophy winner and co-chair, along with ’03 Heisman winner Jason White, of the Sammy B. Fan Club in Gotham City tonight.

Don’t be fooled. That trophy is covered with more than bronze. It is cast in status. A title. A distinction unlike any in sport or maybe out.

"Being part of that fraternity and the things it involves, it just changes,” White said of life. "When you’ve got the Heisman Trophy attached to your name, you’ll get recognized just about everywhere you go.

"He won’t realize it until a couple of months after it happens. Then every time he signs his name, it’s not Sam Bradford anymore. It’s Heisman Trophy winner Sam Bradford.”

The Heisman is the stuff of legend. White is not the greatest quarterback in Sooner history; Jack Mildren, for one, was better. Owens is not the greatest player; Lee Roy Selmon tops that list.

But the statues that rise a post pattern east of Owen Field are not of Mildren or Selmon or Kurt Burris or Roy Williams.

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