11/24/2023
This is a REALLY neat story.
Happy 57th birthday to hall of fame quarterback Troy Aikman. A then 16-year-old Aikman is pictured below receiving a trophy from Oklahoma State head coach Jimmy Johnson in the summer of 1983. Aikman, who was then a star quarterback at Henryetta High School in Oklahoma was the MVP of a youth football camp held at OSU. Aikman and Johnson would cross paths many times in the future. This photo is from Kelli Paul . Her brother Jason is the young boy on the left. Jason is now a high school coach in Moore, OK. Kelli's father Eddie Paul coached the camp.
Aikman initially made a verbal commitment to attend Oklahoma State prior to his senior year of high school. OSU was the first school to offer Aikman a scholarship. But when he later received an offer from the University of Oklahoma, he flipped to the Sooners. At the time, OU head coach Barry Switzer had abandoned the wishbone offense and was running an I-formation attack centered around tailback Marcus Dupree. But when Aikman arrived in Norman as a freshman in the fall of 1984, Dupree had left the program and Switzer brought back the wishbone.
Although Aikman's skillset didn't exactly fit the wishbone, Switzer loved Aikman's powerful throwing arm and tried to modify the offense to include more passing. Aikman began his sophomore year in 1985 as OU's starting quarterback. But in the 4th game of the season, Aikman suffered a broken leg during a 27-14 loss to the Miami Hurricanes, then coached by Jimmy Johnson--the man he turned down coming out of high school. Freshman quarterback Jamelle Holieway replaced Aikman and led the Sooners to the national championship. In his two years at OU, the Sooners made it to the Orange Bowl. Both times, Aikman watched from the sidelines. With Holieway firmly set as the team's starting quarterback, Aikman was looking to transfer. Switzer immediately called his friend Terry Donahue at UCLA and gave him a recommendation. Aikman would finish his final two years of college with the Bruins and earned All American honors as a senior in 1988.
Aikman was expected to be the first pick of the 1989 NFL Draft. The Dallas Cowboys had the first pick. But just a few months before the draft, Arkansas oil tycoon Jerry Jones bought the Cowboys franchise. He immediately fired Tom Landry and replaced him with Jimmy Johnson. When Aikman was drafted, he finally got to play for the coach who first discovered him at a football camp in Stillwater, OK. Aikman would go on to win 3 Super Bowls with the Cowboys--2 of them with Johnson and the last with Switzer. When Johnson was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2022, Aikman gave the presenting speech.
