Oklahoma State football: Determining Justin’s Blackmon’s all-time ranking
By John Scimeca
ESPN recently named former Oklahoma State football star Justin Blackmon as the fourth-best wide receiver of the past 50 years in college football.
Ranking behind only Marshall’s Randy Moss, Pittsburgh’s Larry Fitzgerald, and Alabama’s DeVonta Smith, the former Plainview High School standout was rated ahead of well-known college players such as Desmond Howard, Michael Crabtree, Tim Brown, and Calvin Johnson. It’s a high honor for Blackmon, who moved on from Stillwater following the 2011 season to play only two years in the NFL for the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Justin Blackmon is worthy of discussion among the game’s best wide receivers due to his numbers and his impact on the Oklahoma State football program.
Not surprisingly, Oklahoma State had several other players named to the list of “college football’s 50 best wide receivers of the past 50 years” — James Washington at No. 16 and Hart Lee Dykes at No. 18.
Blackmon merits a place in the discussion of college football’s best wide receivers all-time due to his numbers and to his impact on the OSU football program. The Ardmore, Okla. product exploded on the scene as a sophomore in the 2010 season, tallying 111 catches for 1,782 receiving yards — a single-season receiving yardage mark that ranks fourth all-time among power conference wide receivers. That year, he also produced a 100-yard receiving game and scored a touchdown in every single game, leading the Cowboys to an 11-2 record, a bowl win against Arizona, and a No. 13 national ranking by season’s end.
His junior season, in 2011, he had 122 catches for 1,522 yards and 18 touchdowns while leading the Cowboys within a whisker of playing in the national title game. Other than the aforementioned Crabtree, Blackmon is the only player in college football history to have won the Biletnikoff Award twice.
Beyond Blackmon’s big-game heroics, his consistency as a downfield target, or his eye-popping stats, he was one of the breakout star players that helped put OSU on the national stage. The Cowboys had steadily improved throughout the first decades of the 2000s under head coach Mike Gundy, but they were not serious contenders for Big 12 and national titles before the breakthrough seasons of 2010 and 2011.
In fact, despite OSU’s recent success in the last 5-6 seasons, the Cowboys have still not matched the single-season win totals of 2010 (11 wins) and 2011 (12 wins).
There are some better-known household names ranked behind Blackmon on this list of all-time wide receiver greats (like USC’s Keyshawn Johnson or Miami’s Michael Irvin) — but we’re talking about college football, not the NFL or a combination of the two levels.
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Blackmon’s on-field impact produced some dazzling plays and some signature wins for the program (such as the Fiesta Bowl and the 2011 Bedlam domination) while raising OSU’s profile with Brandon Weeden and Kendall Hunter from an above-average team that could win between 7-9 games to a conference champion and national title contender. With these aspects combined, Blackmon deserves a spot among the top five of college football’s best wide receivers in the past 50 years.