Primarily because of those two knee injuries, the second one of which he still is recovering from, Eagles fans have kept their emotional distance from Bradford since the March 10 trade with the Rams.

While Philadelphia is taking a wait-and-see approach with him, however, there is no shortage of affection for Bradford in these parts. The love and respect for him runs deep here. He is revered both for his athletic accomplishments and for the grounded, humble person he is.

PAUL DOMOWITCH / Daily News staff Bob Wilson, Bradford's high school coach

"Everybody knows Sam's a gifted athlete, but he's also a class act," said Putnam City North athletic director Bob Wilson, who also was the head football coach when Bradford played at the school.

"He's a great, great example for these young kids to follow. There just aren't that many role models anymore. It doesn't matter whether it's sports or life, or whatever. There just aren't enough. But he's one.

"I'm more proud of the way he is than I am of his athleticism. What you see with Sam is what you get. He comes from a great family. The acorn doesn't fall far from the tree there."

The road along the left side of the high school is Sam Bradford Drive. On the first floor of the main building of the school is a huge trophy case featuring a picture of Sam along with his Putnam City North and Oklahoma football jerseys and a replica of the Heisman Trophy.

Down in Norman, a life-sized statue of Bradford stands across the street from the stadium, along with the school's four other Heisman winners – Jason White (2003), Billy Sims (1978), Steve Owens (1969) and Billy Vessels (1952).

"I have such admiration and respect for his parents and how they raised him," Stoops said. "I've told them that I don't know that I've been around a more well-balanced person. I'm talking in life, off the field, on the field. Such a good athlete with perspective on it. All of it. And he had that here as a young guy."

Kent and Martha Bradford have been married 36 years. Kent has been in the insurance business since graduating from OU in the late '70s. Martha, who graduated from Oklahoma State, spent 29 years as an elementary school physical education teacher before retiring five years ago.

Sam has been their life.

"He was just an easy kid to raise," Kent said, as he sipped on an iced tea at a restaurant near his office last week. "We got very, very lucky. He was always eager to please you. He would always do his stuff."

On those rare occasions when Sam misbehaved, Martha played the role of the bad cop.

"Martha's the disciplinarian," Kent said. "Martha would be the one to send him to his room. I'd be the one watching the clock and saying, 'Can Sam come out and play now?'"

Sam has played a lot. And Kent and Martha have always been there to watch him.

They attended every one of his NFL games with the Rams, preseason and regular season, home and away. They were there for every one of his games at OU.

They attended all of his junior high and high school football, basketball and baseball games. They were at all of his golf matches, all of the AAU basketball tournaments and the 5 a.m. hockey games.

"Sam was an only child," Kent said. "He got those advantages of being an only child. He had a captive audience. He was our life.

“ He was just an easy kid to raise. We got very, very lucky. He was always eager to please you. He would always do his stuff.” Kent Bradford

"Really, most of the traveling that Martha and I have ever done, we've only gone on a couple of trips that were non-sports-related or non-Sam-related. But it's been a blast. We got to meet a lot of people and saw a lot of kids grow up and develop.

"When he played on the AAU basketball team with Blake [Griffin], I can remember going to these national tournaments and seeing Kevin Durant and Greg Oden and all those kids when they were young. I can remember seeing them play when they were 10 years old. It's really been cool to watch them all kind of grow up."

Kent and Martha never pushed their son into anything. When he came home and said he wanted to learn to play the cello, they supported him. When he came home and said he wanted to play hockey or basketball or baseball or football or golf, they supported that, as well.

"I was always pretty anti-making him choose what a coach wants him to choose or what anybody thinks he ought to do," Kent said. "I was always, like, 'Hey, if you want to do it, then let's go do it, man. It's fine with us.'"

"His parents were always very supportive of what he wanted to do," said Norma Gallagher, who was the librarian at Sam's elementary school. "They would take him wherever he needed to go."

Sam started playing hockey when he was about 7. An ice rink was not far from his house in northwest Oklahoma City. Martha, who grew up in Chicago and knew how to skate, took him over one day. Not long after that, Sam was asking Santa Claus for ice skates for Christmas and the Bradfords were signing him up for hockey lessons.

Sam played hockey for about five years, somehow squeezing it in between all of the other sports he played. But he became very good at it.

"There weren't enough teams here [in the Oklahoma City area] to have any kind of league," Kent said. "So we would go to Dallas and Houston and Kansas City and Tulsa and Wichita [for games]. All over. It would be a weekend deal. Leave Friday at noon, come back Sunday evening deal. And you're playing games at weird hours.

"I remember we were in Dallas one weekend. We're sitting in our hotel room. Sam's asleep. We're cramming his hockey gear on him at 4:30 in the morning. I look over at Martha and said, 'Are we doing the right thing?' I mean, he's konked out and we're cramming hockey pants on him.

"She looked at me and said, 'Hey, I don't know. But if he ever complains, we're out of here. If he ever says I don't want to play it anymore, that's fine.' But he never complained."

PAUL DOMOWITCH / Daily News staff Mike McEwen, Bradford's youth hockey coach

McEwen, who got involved in the youth hockey program in Oklahoma City after three seasons as coach of the city's minor league hockey team, the Blazers, in the mid-'90s, said Bradford was one of the best players he's ever coached.

"He was tall," McEwen said. "The only thing wrong was he was a little bit slow. Everything else as far as hockey, though, he had. He could see the ice, make plays. He was tough. He was our captain."

When Bradford was 12, his travel team, the Junior Blazers, won the regional championship, beating a team from Houston.

"They were better than us," McEwen said. "We were down, 2-0, at one point, when Sam just kind of took the game over. He had two shifts and got two goals. He had a goal and an assist. He just took it over. You don't see that too often in a big game where a guy just says, 'Bleep it. I'm going to go out and do it,' and then does it. We ended up winning, 3-2."

About that time McEwen, who spent 12 years in the NHL with seven teams, tried, without success, to convince the Bradfords to consider having Sam focus on just hockey.

"I told Kent that I thought Sam could make it in hockey," McEwen said. "I've only done this about three times, because you don't see many kids like Sam.

"I started talking, and after about 30 seconds, I just see this smile come across his face. I'm saying to myself, 'I don't think he's buying it, but I'm going to keep talking.' After about a minute, he said to me, 'You know, Mike. It sounds good. But we're in Oklahoma. And hockey isn't exactly it here.'

"I kept going and trying to change his mind, but the smile just kept getting bigger. I said you're not really going to do this anymore, are you? And he said, 'No, Mike. I think Sam's going to concentrate on the other sports.'

"The way things turned out, he made the right choice. And it couldn't happen to a nicer guy."

Kent said the personal sacrifices his family would have had to make to advance Sam's hockey career would've been just too great.

"The problem with hockey that I saw as a parent," he said, "[was that] for these kids to advance, they were moving away. Eighth grade, ninth grade. Moving in with some host family up in Montana or somewhere like that.

"I'm going, 'That's bull----. I'm not sending my son away. It's not going to happen. He's my son. I want to raise him. I'm not going to send him away.' That's just not in my makeup.

"I said to Mike, 'Sam's got a bunch of buddies in school and is playing school sports. He loves hockey. But it's not that big in Oklahoma. It's not anything we grew up with.'"

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Sam gave up baseball after his freshman year at Putnam City North, but continued to play football, basketball and golf.

"It's mind-boggling how athletic he is in so many different areas," said Bradford's longtime friend and high school golf teammate, Ben Bench. "His [golf] swing is so fundamentally sound, especially for as little as he played. I've played with Rickie Fowler. I've played with Anthony Kim. I've played with a couple of other guys who have played on tour.

"His swing, it's hard to describe or put into words. But it's so simple it doesn't really wow you. But I've played a lot of golf with him, and because [his swing] is so simple, it's so repeatable, and I think that's what makes him such a good golfer."

A lot of high school football coaches have been known to try to dissuade their players from playing other sports. They want them spending every spare minute in the weight room, getting bigger and stronger. But Bob Wilson always encouraged Sam to play other sports.

"That's one of the things I appreciated about Bob," Kent Bradford said. "There are a lot of high school coaches who are selfish to a certain extent, as far as wanting a kid to play their deal.

"But Bob was a big-picture guy. He encouraged Sam to play other sports. He told him, if you want to play them go play them. Bob knew that the vast majority of these kids aren't going to do anything past high school anyway. Might as well let them enjoy it."

Stoops said he actually became sold on Bradford not after watching him play football, but after watching him play basketball.

"I was watching one of their basketball practices," he said. "I liked what I saw of him throwing the [football] around and all that. But when you see him running around the basketball court, draining it from deep, going up and getting a tip and dunking it, I'm thinking, wait a second. This is an athlete. He looked so smooth running up and down the court."

Bradford was one of the most accurate passers in the country at Oklahoma. Has the same perfect mechanics throwing the football that he has swinging a golf club. He completed nearly 68 percent of his pass attempts in 31 starts for the Sooners.

Had separate streaks of 21 and 22 completions in a row.

"It was unbelievable," Stoops said. "And it wasn't just once in a while. You'd watch him in practice, I'd intentionally watch him for 20 straight minutes, and there wouldn't be one ball that was out of place."

NFL scouts still speak in superlatives about Bradford's Pro Day workout before the 2010 draft.

"He threw for something like 45 minutes and however many passes, and there was just one ball that was a little bit off," Stoops said. "One slant [throw] was back on the hip. The rest of them were right where you'd want the football to be.

"I was on the golf cart with him after his workout and someone was asking him if he was going to throw again if [individual] teams wanted to work him out. Somebody said, 'Why would you want to throw again?'

"He didn't say anything and kind of half-smiled at me, and I looked at him and said, 'Because you know you'd do it again.' He shook his head as if to say, 'I'm not afraid to throw the football.' He said, 'I'll throw every day if they want me to.'

"It wasn't a fluke that he had that day. He can have that day all the time. He's that good."