Grayson Weir
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Adrian Peterson is one of the greatest running backs in college football history. The former five-star, No. 1 overall recruit had three incredible seasons at Oklahoma before being drafted with the No. 7 pick in the 2007 NFL Draft.
However, Peterson almost didn’t end up in Norman. He grew up in Texas and was highly considering the Longhorns, as well as the USC Trojans.
Ed Orgeron even tried to get Peterson’s incarcerated father transferred to California in an effort to land the top-ranked running back. He was ultimately unsuccessful.
Peterson’s recruitment came down to the two Red River Shootout rivals— Texas and Oklahoma.
In the end, he landed with the Sooners. But why and how did he not end up in Austin? That has been a point of contention amongst Longhorns fans for years. It was a huge swing and miss.
Mack Brown is to blame for Adrian Peterson ending up at Oklahoma.
Peterson was inducted into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame this past weekend and pulled back the curtain on his recruitment. He detailed multiple meetings with head coaches across the country, including Pete Carroll and Bob Stoops. They both told him that he would have a chance to start right away at their respective programs.
His meeting with Brown, then-head coach at Texas, was the reason that he chose Oklahoma. Peterson was not promised the opportunity to compete for a starting job on Day 1.
He was like ‘Well, Adrian, I’m not going to lie to you. Cedric Benson, he decided to come back for his senior year. So, we’re going to be loyal to him and we’re going to let him ride it out. But after that, you can compete for it.’ I said ‘Okay, appreciate it’ and that was it. I never told him that I wasn’t coming. But that was the decision I made based off that.
— Adrian Peterson
Brown was loyal to Benson and Orgeron couldn’t get Peterson’s dad transferred, so Peterson chose to play for Stoops. The rest is history!
Peterson ran for 334 yards on 57 carries in the two games that he was healthy against Texas. He ran for more than 4,000 yards in his three years at Oklahoma. Brown missed out on an all-time great!
Here is Peterson’s recount of how it all went down:
There it is! The long unsolved mystery of how Texas missed out on Peterson has been solved.
He forgot to tell the part about how he wanted to “play for a championship”… which happened in 2005 at Texas while AD was still at OU.
Imagine that 2005 team with both AD and Vince Young.
(Yes, they had freshman Jamaal Charles that year, but Jamaal Charles didn’t really become Jamaal Charles until the next year.)
I mean, everyone kind of made the right choice. Its not like Benson sucked, and its rare to see a college football coach actually be loyal to a player. Plus AD got the Heisman at Oklahoma.