Column: To Oklahoma QB Casey Thompson, ‘Legacy’ Means Something Different

But he played just three games for the Owls, sustained another injury, and figured his career was finished.

Instead, he appealed to the NCAA for a medical hardship — he also had his COVID year, two season-ending injuries and a redshirt in his pocket — and he got it.

When the NCAA came through, Thompson finally followed his dreams — and his brother’s, and his dad’s — and chose to finish with the Sooners.

“As a family, we’re blessed — No. 1, to have the seventh year, but the (last) injury happened the way it did,” Charles Thompson said. “If it happened a week later, he doesn’t have that option (of applying for a medical hardship year).

“What became a blessing, at first we thought it was a curse, but now it’s come full circle at Oklahoma.”

Casey brings 5,338 career passing yards, 52 touchdowns and 24 interceptions with him, along with a .635 completion percentage and a 152.4 passer efficiency rating. He’s also rushed for 189 yards and 10 touchdowns.

No one’s under any illusion that he’s going to come in and start ahead of rising sophomore Jackson Arnold. Arnold is a 5-star recruit and Gatorade National Player of the Year, and was good enough to elevate himself to Dillon Gabriel’s backup last season. He also threw for 361 yards and two touchdowns in the Alamo Bowl, the fourth-best bowl total in program history. Arnold is the future of the OU offense.

But if Arnold gets hurt — or if he gets into a prolonged slump — there’s no one better than Casey Thompson to have as a Plan B.

“He brings a level of experience — there’s not a person in the room that’s been somewhere that he hasn’t been,” Charles said. “With those three youngsters (Arnold and true freshmen Michael Hawkins and Brenden Zurbrugg) — remember when he was at Texas, they went and brought in Cam Rising — so he’s been the starter, he’s been the backup. He’s been the transfer. He’s been the new guy, the young guy, now he’s the old guy. There’s not a situation in that room he will not have been in.”

Casey understands the Sooners’ quarterback situation. He also understands the idea of being a part of OU’s Thompson family quarterback legacy. He specifically announced his commitment on Jan. 11 at 6 p.m. — 1-11 at 6 — to honor that legacy. His brother wore No. 11, and his dad wore No. 6.

“It certainly means something to us that we got now three Thompsons that played football at the University of Oklahoma,” Charles said. “Playing at OU was a dream of mine since I was 6 years old. And I got to do that. I got to play quarterback for the Sooners. And if you just stopped there, I was extremely blessed. But then Kendal goes there and plays quarterback, and now Casey is there to play quarterback. It’s just mind boggling.”

Charles Thompson is family first, through and through. But at least now he won’t have to hide how he really feels about the Texas Longhorns. He couldn’t have been prouder of Casey when he threw for 2,113 yards and 24 TD in 2021, and when he threw for 388 yards and five scores against the Sooners in Dallas.

But it always felt just a little off. He grew up loving OU and despising Texas.

“Just, 2021 was just odd,” Thompson said. “I found myself rooting against the team I love, and that’s the Oklahoma Sooners.”

And all that Texas gear he accumulated watching his son for four years on the Forty Ares?

“I gave it all away," he said. "It was mostly that ‘All gas, no brakes’ stuff. Gave it to a friend of mine.”

Even as his son won the starting job and set records throwing the football for the Longhorns, it never felt quite right for the kid who grew up in Lawton and became Barry Switzer’s last wishbone wizard.

“All the burnt orange stuff — truthfully speaking, I never had burnt orange in my closet. It was always white or black,” he said. “That was such a strange year, 2021. I was really, truthfully rooting for Texas that year when Casey was the starting quarterback. But I don’t know that I actually cared or rooted all that hard for Texas when he was the backup.”

It was a little easier in 2022, when Casey went 14-of-20 for 129 yards with a touchdown against the Sooners in a 49-14 Oklahoma blowout in Lincoln. A little. Charles never really had anything against Nebraska — made his second collegiate start against the Cornhuskers, actually, way back in 1987, two weeks after Jamelle Holieway's knee injury.

Charles’ brief OU career ended in 1989, in infamy, of course, on the cover of Sports Illustrated in an orange prison jumpsuit after a federal sting caught him selling cocaine. He served 17 months in federal prison, got out and resurfaced at Central State, OH, where he helped win the NAIA national championship as a running back in 1992.

It was a hard lesson, but he turned his life around. That much is clear from the success his two quarterback sons enjoyed in college football — for the last dozen years and counting. Charles raised them right, raised them to be winners, raised them to be quarterbacks.

Raised them to be OU quarterbacks.

Charles told me in a 2009 interview that his faith-based life after football was fueled in part by those who shunned him after his arrest.

That included his own father, Leacy, who told Charles on his death bed during a special prison release, “You could have made something out of yourself, but all you are is a drug pusher."

“It was very hard to hear those words and to be dealing with that, that whole period," Charles told me in 2009. "But I used it all as motivation. There were a lot of people who turned their backs on me, that basically counted me out in terms of being a successful person in life. It was fuel. It was fuel for me because I felt like my whole entire life people had told me that I wasn't gonna be something."

Now, time has healed many, many wounds, and as a father takes measure of his son’s young life, faith again is the basis for it all.

“One reason he wanted to play and do this was his passion and affiliation with Brent Venables as godly man,” Charles said. “I think in a lot of ways, this was more about faith than it was about football. … His focus is to come in and be the best he can be, just like it’s always been. He wants to help Oklahoma in 2024 be the best football team they can be.

“I think him, as a whole, being at University of Oklahoma will make him a better person and a better quarterback.”

Now, 13 years later, Kendal has officially passed the torch to Casey to finish what their dad started.

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