Three Oklahoma Players Land on 2025 College Football HOF Ballot

Three Oklahoma Sooners are featured on this year’s ballot for the 2025 College Football Hall of Fame class.

Linebacker George Cumby, linebacker Rocky Calmus and quarterback Josh Heupel are among the 77 former players announced as candidates for the upcoming class. Heupel and Calmus have been on the ballot multiple times.

Heupel quarterbacked the Sooners in 1999-2000 and was at the forefront of the OU renaissance under Bob Stoops. After setting virtually every passing record as a transfer from Snow Junior College in ’99, he guided the Sooners to the National Championship in 2000. 

He won the Walter Camp Award, the Archie Griffin Award and was named AP Player of the Year and Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year and was consensus All-America in 2000, passing for 3,850 yards and 38 touchdowns in ’99 and 3,606 yards and 27 TDs in 2000. Heupel is still ranked fifth in program history with 7,456 yards total offense and is fifth with 56 TD passes. He's currently head coach at the University of Tennessee.

Calmus was the Sooners’ defensive captain of that 2000 national title squad, a legacy player from Jenks and a holdover from the John Blake era who steered the vaunted Sooners’ defense  into one of the most dominant eras in program history from 1999-2001. He was a two-time consensus All-American in 2000-01 and Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year in 2000 and also won the Dick Butkus Award and the Jack Lambert Award as a senior in ’01. He’s fifth in school history with 431 career tackles and ranks No. 1 all-time in school history with 59 tackles for loss. 

Cumby was a force of nature on Barry Switzer’s teams of the late 1970s and was a three-time All-American (1977-78-79). He was also named Big Eight Defensive Player of the Year in each of his final two seasons. Calmus' son Casen Calmus is currently a walk-on defensive back on the OU roster.

Cumby finished his career with 437 tackles, which ranks No. 4 in school history, and is tied for third in school history for interceptions by a linebacker with five. His 160 tackles in 1979 ranks fourth in program history, and his 154 in 1977 ranks ninth. He’s also tied for ninth in program annals with 19 tackles in a game in 1977, and was a first-round draft pick of the Green Bay Packers in 1980. Cumby is currently a pastor in the Houston area.

The National Football Foundation and College Hall of Fame emailed the ballots out Monday to more than 12,000 NFF members for consideration. 

The announcement of the 2025 class will be made in early 2025, with specific details to be revealed later. The class will be officially inducted on Dec. 9, 2025, in Las Vegas.

Currently, 23 players and six coaches from Oklahoma are in the College Football Hall of Fame.

JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

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