Oklahoma fans petition for Baker Mayfield’s Heisman Park statue to troll Ohio State, also be funny

On Saturday, Baker Mayfield is going to become Oklahoma’s sixth Heisman winner. He will join Billy Vessels (1952), Steve Owens (1969), Billy Sims (1978), Jason White (2003), and Sam Bradford (2008) as Sooners to take college football’s top individual award. And after he does, Mayfield’s going to get a statue.

OU has a little park of Heisman winners’ statues, called Heisman Park:

Mayfield’s likeness is next to go up there, and a sizable group of Sooners fans wants the statue to depict this:

After OU won at Ohio State in September — a result that ultimately put the Sooners in the Playoff and kept the Buckeyes out — Mayfield ran to midfield at Ohio Stadium and speared an Oklahoma flag into the turf. (He did not actually pierce the ground, I don’t think.) By Thursday afternoon, 4,000 people had signed a petition that reads:

Winners of the Heiman Trophy who attend The University of Oklahoma are memorialized in Heisman Park on Jenkins Avenue in Norman, OK with their own statue. Sign this petition to show your support for depicting Baker Mayfield planting the flag against Ohio State.

The petition is to be delivered to the university.

Some reasons for signing:

I’m sold.

Ohio State fans were furious. One message board excerpt, for a sample:

I never thought something like what Mayfield just did would piss me off so much. Don’t plant shit on our field. Especially not on the “O”. You RESPECT the “O”. You piece of shit. Just take your W, go home and run around out there. You looked like a kindergartener out running like that. Learn to respect your opponents next time, asshole.

Who cares, though? I mean, honestly. Who cares?

Someone or something convinced Mayfield to say he was sorry in the face of OSU backlash.

Mayfield remembered a year earlier when Ohio State had sung its fight song after a huge win in Norman. This was just natural payback, if a bit escalated, but he expressed regret over doing this entirely harmless thing that was probably lots of fun after he won a sporting event.

Even if it weren’t just a little tit-for-tat bragging, let me say again to emphasize: Who cares? Planting a flag on a football field is a 100-percent victimless act. Sad Ohio State fans who were mad that their team got destroyed do not count as victims. It would’ve been equally cool if Ohio State had done the same thing after winning at Oklahoma in 2016. Nobody was materially injured in any way by what Mayfield did.

It would be funny. Also, it would look cool. Next.