With the 2025 college football season and the 2025 calendar year both coming to a close, we’ve made it through a quarter of the 21st century in the often wild and wacky world of college football. With a landmark moment comes the opportunity to look back over the last 25 years, which is exactly what’s happening over at ESPN.
Staff writer David Hale ranked the top 25 most college football moments of the 21st century so far. His list highlights the moments that are so unique, so weird, so ridiculous, they could only take place in college football. The question becomes, did any moments involving the Oklahoma Sooners make the cut?
One of the most memorable moments of an excellent quarter-century for OU did in fact get its due. In the second game of the 2017 season, Oklahoma came into Columbus, Ohio to take on the Ohio State Buckeyes. The game was a rematch from last season, when the Buckeyes drilled the Sooners in Norman. This time, the game would be in the famous Horseshoe.
Leading the Sooners into that battle of top-five teams was quarterback Baker Mayfield, and he put together one of his trademark sterling performances to help OU take down Ohio State that night. With 386 passing yards and 3 touchdowns in the 31-16 upset win, it would have been a memorable moment on its own. However, it was what Mayfield, ever the showman and the polarizing personality, did after the game that went viral.
Mayfield grabbed an Oklahoma flag, ran it around the stadium, and then planted it midfield on the Ohio State logo while he and his teammates danced on it. It’s a snapshot that has inspired plenty of other flag-plants after a biog win in the years since.
However, the original flag plant moment was an instant sensation, and it was something only Mayfield could have dreamed up. What’s more, that night set the Sooners on a path to the College Football Playoff and a Big 12 Championship. Some loved loved Mayfield’s iconic moment, and some hated it, but it was a moment that will live forever, and a moment that was unequivocally college football.
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This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: Baker Mayfield’s flag plant is a moment Sooner fans won’t ever forget
