Imagine making such an impression on your teammates, coaches and an entire university system that they name an award in your honor.

At the University of Oklahoma, Don Key is pretty much a household name to Sooners’ Football. The reason? Well, there are many… It was 1979 to 1981. Oklahoma, like numerous colleges around the country, had their sights on Don -- one of the state’s top high school linemen. His mother refused to let him move far away. But when Legendary OU Coach Barry Switzer tried to recruit him, everything changed. Coach Switzer said to his mother, “Carolyn, if Don comes to Oklahoma, he is no longer just your son, but he will be our son too…” Well, that settled it. Don was on his way to OU.

He was a three-year starter, earning all Big 8 honors in 1978, 1979 and 1980, and Orange Bowl champions from 1979 to 1981. Don was a potential All-American, until a ruptured kidney his junior year cut his football career short. That injury saved his life. It led doctors to malignant cancer found in the kidney.

In Don’s honor, Coach Barry Switzer established the Don Key Award, which remains the only individual award given in Sooner football.

He remembers that moment like it was yesterday and says, “You can’t convince me until the day I die that, that wasn’t an act of mercy.” He still wonders: “What if it had been my left kidney, instead of my right kidney? But it was the right kidney…and here I am, 30 years later.”

Don continued on to earn a degree in business at the University of Oklahoma in 1983 and has worked as a landman in the oil and gas industry throughout the entirety of his career. He often speaks at various university and professional events. His talks extoll the virtues of life’s challenges. Often the emphasis is “press on!”