Rare Video of Barry Sanders’ Football Highlights from High School are Insane

ESPN’s Jake Trotter penned an incredible behind the scenes look at Barry Sanders’ legendary Heisman Trophy winning season in 1988 that published on Thursday. If you haven’t read it, you should. Included in the piece are untold stories (his dad was an OU fan!) that will give you a super blast from the past re-living his “untouchable” season.

Like this gem from OSU coach Pat Jones about Sanders apparently sleeping through position meetings.

“I finally told them, ‘Just let him sleep if he wants to,'” Pat Jones said. “I mean, the guy’s running for a gazillion yards.”

Or this gold, from Sanders’ QB, Mike Gundy.

According to Gundy, Sanders even nodded off on the bench during the second quarter of the Holiday Bowl, which would be the final game of his college career. Gundy said Sanders would always “take cat naps” during halftime, too.

“We had those old wire-cage lockers and he would lean back and sleep,” Gundy said. “But we didn’t make a lot of adjustments. We did the same thing all the time. And he was so much better than everybody else it didn’t make a difference.” [ESPN]

The biggest revelation of the story may be what he did prior to his time at OSU, though. Trotter dug up rare footage of Barry’s high school days, making it even more incomprehensible how he slipped past Nebraska, OU and other powers to get to Oklahoma State via Wichita.

You can check out Sanders’ high school tape below and it’s not hard to realize why OSU had to feel like it made out like bandits by landing him back in the day.