Shoate was a soph my senior year. I like Dante as a linebacker more. Shoate did sort of re-invent the linebacker position. I remember reading about some assistant coach getting ready to play USC and calling Lacewell and asking how they taught Shoate to catch USC's power sweep from behind and Lacewell telling him that Shoate did it on his own.
But my favorite linebackers are guys that fill a hole and knock the running back, backward. Shoate wasn't that guy. But he was really fast. Same with Cumby.
I like Bosworth, but he was close to the same. Dante knocked more guys backward. Bosworth was faster. He did play an unbelievable linebacker position his redshirt freshman season. And he played a greater game against Miami in the 86 loss down there. I'm more partial to guys, especially linebackers who do the job without calling attention to themselves every time they make a big play.
I think that Tubbs and Harrison in the 50s were at least Shoate's equal. Rod had LeRoy and Dewey in front of him his senior year, and LeeRoy, Dewey and Lucious in front of him his junior year, in 73. That may have been best OU's defense ever.
I'd take Dante and the Boz over Rod. And I'd likely take Loftin over Shoate.
Loved Calmus. Really, really liked Lehman. But the best linebacker I've seen in the Stoops era, was a guy who was only elite until his knee injury. Watch a little tape of Lance Mitchell before his knee ligament injury. For six weeks, he may have been OU's best ever. When he came back after, he was pretty good, but not dominant.
And the OU teams he played for weren't great, ,but Carl McAdams was a very good college linebacker.
The two most underrated quality linebackers of the Stoops era played together in 2005: Ingram and Loftin.
