FT LAUDERDALE, Fla.–Oklahoma’s junior All America quarterback Baker Mayfield has a list of all the negative stories, comments and perceived slights he has received from all the skeptics written in his cell phone. They serve as personal motivation as he heads into in college football’s national semi-final game against top-ranked Clemson here Thursday night at Sun Life Stadium and include the college coaches who didn’t think he was tall enough or athletic enough to play at the highest level, the coaches who strung him along throughout recruiting during his high school playing days at Lake Travis High in Austin, then didn’t offer him a scholarship.

He hasn’t revealed the names on the list to anyone.

But it’s pretty easy to guess.

The 6-1, 209-pound Mayfield was the lifelong Oklahoma fan, who’d spent countless Saturdays during his childhood at Memorial Stadium. Mayfield’s father, James, was friends with Sooners assistant Bobby Jack Wright, but when the coach hosted Mayfield for an unofficial visit in the fall of 2011, it became obvious he was only doing his dad a favor. James Mayfield recalled meeting assistants Josh Heupel and Cale Gundy that day shortly after a win over Texas A&M. At the time, Baker stood just 5’10” and weighed 190 pounds—hardly an ideal frame for a major-college quarterback.

The family returned home the following day and never heard from Oklahoma again.

TCU seemed like a more realistic goal. The Big 12 school was located in Ft. Worth, were close to home and was highly successful. After his junior-year success, he seemed set to join the Horned Frogs. Through his senior year TCU coaches invited him to satellite camps all over the state, where they had him throw to other top recruits. “They led me on,” Mayfield claimed. “They told me they were going to offer me a scholarship and kind of drug it out. I told other schools that I wasn’t interested because I thought I was going to go there. I truly believed that they were going to offer me because they told me that. They disappointed me and kind of hung me out to dry right before signing day. Then a week before signing day they told me that they weren’t going to offer a quarterback in my class. Three days later they took a kid out in Temple (a rival high school) who we just absolutely destroyed at seven-on-seven, and I was pretty insulted. He was 6′ 3″. That helped me decide where I wanted to walk on. I wanted to go somewhere where I could play against TCU.”

Asked about his relationship with Patterson, Mayfield said, “He doesn’t like me and I have no comment about that.”

Mayfield blew off scholarship offers from Florida Atlantic, Washington State and New Mexico, matriculating as Texas Tech as a walk on in 2013. When he arrived he discovered starter Michael Brewer, who is also from Lake Travis, was injured and the job was open. Two months later, Mayfield came out of nowhere to become the first freshman to start a season opener at quarterback for a Power 5 team and he made the most of it, passing for 413 yards and four touchdowns during a 41-23 win over SMU. Two games later, he led Tech to a 21-20 victory over TCU. Mayfield was 5-0 as a starter when he suffered a right knee injury during a 51-33 victory over Kansas.

By the time he was healthy, his situation had changed. Mayfield had been selected Big 12 Rookie of the Year, but Kingsbury reopened the quarterback competition before the bowl game and reportedly dragged his feet on offering Mayfield a scholarship. Mayfield claimed he was told there wouldn’t be a scholarship until the next fall.

Kingsbury disputed that, claiming Mayfield knew he was getting a school for the spring of 2014.

Either way, the relationship was broken and Mayfield opted to walk out, driving up to Norman with his mother Gina to enroll at Oklahoma in January with the intention of trying out for the team.

It seemed like a long shot. The Sooners were coming off a 45-31 Sugar Bowl victory over Alabama, with redshirt freshman Trevor Knight earning MVP honors and looking like a rising superstar. OU coach Bob Stoops had heard rumors Mayfield was on campus but never met him until February when Mayfield introduced himself. Knight and the other quarterbacks on campus got most of the snaps in spring ball, but then Mayfield outplayed them all in the spring game.

Oklahoma offered him a scholarship for the fall of 2014 but he had to sit because of NCAA transfer rules and lost a year of eligibility because he transferred in conference. He served as the quarterback on the scout team, preparing the first team defense for opposing offenses. OU went through a disappointing 8-5 season that included an embarrassing 40-6 loss to Clemson in the Russell Athletic Bowl in Orlando, in which Stoops was filleted when rumors spread that his team didn’t want to be there. Mayfield was an eye witness on the sidelines.

“It’s tough, just because it’s the last game of the year and it was already a very disappointing season, so that left kind of a bitter taste in our mouth,” Mayfield said. “It embarrassed us, there’s no doubt about it. Can’t sugar coat that. It was very disappointing to be on the sidelines for a game like that, knowing you can’t help.

“We’re a completely different team this year. Obviously Clemson is, too. They have a different quarterback and they kind of reloaded their defensive line, so I mean, it is a completely different ballgame, but we’re different in the sense that we still lost that day. That’s motivation for us. We still listen to the commentating of the broadcast and how disrespectful it was. We listen to that as motivation, not as learning from the game tape, because we’re a completely different team.”

In wake of the devastation, Stoops fired co-offensive coordinators Huepel and Jay Norvell, hired 32-year old Mike Leach disciple Lincoln Riley away from East Carolina to replace them and opted to make a change at quarterback.

Mayfield beat Knight out for the job and has had a Big 12 Player of the Year season, using his strong arm to complete 68.6 percent of his passes for 3,389 yards, 35 touchdown passes and just five interceptions and successfully scrambling out of the pocket to elude tacklers and keep drives alive as the Sooners rolled to an 11-1 record and their first Big 12 championship since 2012. OU is averaging Mayfield had some magical moments when he helped the Sooners rally from a 14 point fourth quarter deficit to defeat Tennessee, 23-19, in Knoxville. In the fourth quarter and two overtimes, Mayfield accounted for four touchdowns. Then, he upgraded his play in November to push the Sooners,. who are averaging 45.8 points and 542.9 yards, into the national playoff picture, putting an exclamation point on the season with a 53-23 blowout of Oklahoma State.

Along the way during a seven game winning streak after an unexpected loss to Texas, there was the Oct. 24 home game against Tech, in which Mayfield passed for 212-yards and two touchdowns as the Sooners rolled to a 63–27 win. Afterward Kingsbury said, “Good game,” as he shook Mayfield’s hand. “I said, ‘Good luck the rest of the year,'” says Mayfield, “and that was it—first time we’d spoken since I’d left.”

Mayfield helped OU drop 62 and 52 on Kansas and Iowa State and 44 on Baylor, a team that had beaten the Sooners, 48-14, last season in Waco. The only time he has been stopped recently came when the Sooners faced TCU, and Mayfield, with two touchdown passes and 169 total yards in the first half, staked Oklahoma to a 23–7 lead before leaving the game with a concussion. The Sooners held on for a 30–29 win.
Mayfield improvisational approach to the has drawn comparisons to Johnny Manziel. “Maybe on the field,” he admitted. “But everything else is over the top.”

Mayfield has a new cleaned up look as he approaches the biggest game of his career. He has gotten rid of the Fu Manchu mustache and the scarfed he ties around his head. But he maintains the chip on the shoulder attitude. His latest target– the Heisman Trust, which didn’t invite him as one of its finalists. Perhaps it’s fitting Mayfield did win the Burlsworth Trophy for the best player to start his career as a walk-on.

It has been the fuel he needs to succeed.