For the third time since the league’s inception, Oklahoma State has a Big 12 Offensive Player of the Year.
Ollie Gordon, a sophomore running back, picked up the honor Wednesday. He joins Justin Blackmon (2010) and Chuba Hubbard (2019) as the only Cowboys to earn the award that has been given out since 1996. Gordon leads the nation in rushing this season with 1,580 yards while scoring 20 rushing touchdowns. Also a threat in the passing game, Gordon has 272 receiving yards and another touchdown through the air.
Named one of three Doak Walker finalists on Tuesday, Gordon has ran for at least 120 yards in eight games this season. He had back to back games of 282 yards and 271 yards against West Virginia and Cincinnati, respectively. He has ran for multiple touchdowns in five games this season, including a four-touchdown performance against the Mountaineers and a five-touchdown performance against BYU this past Saturday.
His week-in, week-out performances have earned Gordon the right to be in the same breath with Barry Sanders. Gordon and Sanders are the only Cowboy players to run for 250 yards in back-to-back weeks. And Gordon and Sanders are the only OSU players to run for five touchdowns in a game (something Sanders did three times).
All of this comes after Gordon had just 19 carries through OSU’s three nonconference games.
In Big 12 play alone, Gordon has 1,471 rushing yards and 18 rushing touchdowns. That’s 296 more yards than second-place Tahj Brooks and six more touchdowns than RJ Harvey and Garrett Greene, who are tied in second with 12. In Big 12 play, Gordon has rushed for more yards than five Big 12 teams and more touchdowns than seven Big 12 teams.
Entering the Big 12 Championship, Gordon’s 1,580-yard season ranks ninth in program history. In nine games as the Cowboys’ bell-cow back, Gordon has averaged 163.4 yards a game. If he averaged that over OSU’s final two games, he’d finish with about 1,907 yards, which would rank third in program history behind Sanders (2,850 in 1988) and Hubbard (2,094 in 2019) — all while playing sparingly during the first three games.
Gordon came to Stillwater as a four-star prospect out of Euless-Trinity (TX). He chose OSU over offers from Texas, Michigan, Arkansas, Nebraska, TCU and others. As a true freshman in 2022, Gordon carried 62 times for 308 yards and two touchdowns. His best game last season came in OSU’s regular-season finale against West Virginia, where Gordon carried 17 times for 136 yards and a touchdown.
He becomes the program’s eighth conference offensive player of the year overall. Pre-Big 12, Terry Miller won Big Eight Offensive Player of the Year in 1976 and 1977. Thurman Thomas won Big Eight Offensive Player of the Year in 1985 and 1987. Sanders won Big Eight Offensive Player of the Year in 1988.
Read this original article at Pistols Firing Blog.