Tulsa World: OU won't overload Sam's '09 schedule

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OU won't overload Sam's '09 schedule

By JOHN E. HOOVER World Sports Writer
Published: 7/5/2009 2:21 AM
Last Modified: 7/5/2009 5:28 AM

Oklahoma quarterback Sam Bradford is the returning Heisman Trophy winner. But that doesn't mean he's now a public figure when he returns to school for the 2009 season.

"The only thing I see that would be dramatically different," said Kenny Mossman, OU's senior associate athletic director for communications, "I just think there will be a lot of national media that will probably want to come to Norman or get him on a call-in show or that sort of thing. I'm guessing a fair number of those will be disappointed. It's just never been his nature to do a lot of media."

Mossman is in charge of coordinating media access to football players and other OU student-athletes. Bradford may be a celebrity of the highest magnitude in college football circles, but his free time will still belong to him this fall.

"We've left his autograph signings — which he really can't do very much, from a commercial sense — and his appearances up to him, and he's done a pretty good job of regulating those himself. He's turned down a vast majority of them," Mossman said. "I think he's tried to have a pretty normal summer, and then once we get in the fall, I think we'll just go back to what we've done in the past, which was, from a media perspective, try to make him available one day a week."

Mossman learned a valuable lesson during Jason White's 2003 Heisman campaign: Don't overdo it.

Mossman has said he made White available for too many interviews, and White started to feel the crunch. White came to Mossman late in

'

03 and said he needed to do fewer interviews. That has guided Mossman's philosophy ever since with frequently requested star players like Bradford and Adrian Peterson.

"I think we already understand where Sam is on that sort of thing now, because he gave us some of those same thoughts during the course of (2008) year," Mossman said. "We've tried to illustrate for him those that are real important and those that he needs to take care of, and everything else, we pretty much leave it to him. His default answer, most of the time, is to not do it if he has the option."

John E. Hoover 581-8384
john.hoover@tulsaworld.com By JOHN E. HOOVER World Sports Writer

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