You wouldn’t know it to look at it, but the Baker Mayfield Heisman statue has gone up in Norman. It’s no Cristiano-Ronaldo-bust-level disaster, but it’s also definitely not Baker Mayfield’s face. My best hypothesis right now is that the sculptor took a guess at what the Heisman-winning quarterback is going to look like approximately 35 years from now and then just sort of went off that vibe. I want to go with this theory because the only alternative explanation for what happened there is that the sculptor had never seen Mayfield in their life and just built a statue of a random man doing the iconic Heisman pose.
It’s literally so unrecognizable that the photos of Mayfield standing next to the statue would, without context, never be interpreted as a guy standing next to his own likeness. See for yourself here and enjoy a good laugh:
The guesses to the actual inspiration for this statue’s face (we cannot, in good faith, assume that it was Mayfield) are running amok on Twitter — comparisons range from Always Sunny’s Glenn Howerton to the late James Dean, from 2 Fast 2 Furious’ Cole Hauser to Terminator 2’s T-1000 (Sequel villains? Can’t even get the originals. That’s tough).
A lot of this probably could have been avoided if the statue included a helmet, but it does seem to imply that Mayfield was playing a football game sans helmet. Some of the issue seems to be with a headband that is carved into the statue that unfortunately didn’t really come across in the photographs.
Oklahoma erects statues to all of their Heisman trophy winners, so Cardinals QB Kyler Murray will be next on the list to have an effigy built. At this point, the best case scenario for Murray would be a vague resemblance. As long as his statue doesn’t look like he was eligible for AARP benefits while playing college football, it’ll be a win. Mayfield won football’s most prestigious award in 2017, and Murray followed it up with a back-to-back for Oklahoma in 2018.
Mayfield is currently on the Browns roster, but isn’t expected to stay with the franchise past this year. He averaged over 4,000 passing yards per season in his three years with the Sooners.