Ken Griffey Jr. Almost Played College Football At Oklahoma

Ken Griffey Jr. recently did an interview with the Bat Boys Baseball and dropped a fun piece of Oklahoma what-if history.

The Hall of Famer said that if he had gone the college football route instead of jumping straight to the big leagues, there was one school he wanted.

Griffey explained that basically every offer he got out of high school was for football. Schools knew if he stuck with baseball, he was going pro right away. His only baseball offer was from Gulf Coast State, a JUCO.

“What’s funny is that everybody goes, Well, you guys are a baseball family because of my dad played. If you look at our lineage and history, everybody played football,” Griffey said.

Then they asked him where he would’ve gone for football. No hesitation.

“Oklahoma.”

That was it. Clean and immediate.

Griffey played wide receiver in high school and had offers from Oklahoma and Michigan, among others. If he had chosen the Sooners, he would’ve shown up in Norman in 1987 under Barry Switzer.

That 1987 team was loaded. Jamelle Holieway and Charles Thompson both started games at quarterback. The Sooners went 11-1, won the Big Eight, and finished third in the AP Poll after losing to Miami in the Orange Bowl.

Add a talent like Griffey to that mix and who knows? Maybe they punch that ticket for another national championship — which would’ve been Switzer’s fourth. And maybe the program stays on a different path and Switzer doesn’t end up resigning two years later in 1989 amid the NCAA stuff.

Griffey went to Archbishop Moeller High School in Cincinnati, same school as his future teammate Barry Larkin. On the baseball side he was the national high school player of the year in 1987 after hitting .478 with 17 home runs. The guy was a freak athlete in both sports.

Obviously he made the right call sticking with baseball. Twenty-two year career, Hall of Fame in 2016, 13-time All-Star, 1997 AL MVP, 10 Gold Gloves, seven Silver Sluggers. “The Kid” became one of the most exciting players the game has ever seen.

Still, it’s a fun thought for Sooner fans. A young Ken Griffey Jr. running routes for Switzer in the late ’80s is the kind of alternate history that makes you shake your head. Oklahoma was still Oklahoma back then, and Griffey had the kind of athleticism that would’ve translated.

Whether he sticks around long enough to make a real dent or eventually leaves for baseball is another story, but the fact that he picked the Sooners first says something.

He also pushed back a bit on the whole “baseball family” narrative. His dad had a long MLB career, but the rest of the family tree leaned football. That makes the Oklahoma answer feel even more natural.

Baseball got the best version of Griffey, and the sport is better for it. But for Oklahoma fans, it’s a cool little piece of lore. One of the greatest to ever play the game once looked at college football and said the place he wanted to go was Norman.

Hard not to wonder what that 1987 team would’ve looked like with him in the mix.