Former IU Kicker Griffin Oakes Found Redemption and a Place on BTN's All-Decade Team
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Written by Sammy Jacobs (@Hoosier_Huddle)
The Big Ten Network released their All-Decade team for the 2010’s this week as they recognized the best football players in the conference during that time. Griffin Oakes was the second Hoosier to earn honors, after Dan Feeney was named a First-Team All-Decade offensive lineman. Oakes kicked for the Hoosiers from 2013 to 2017 and took home the Big Ten’s Bakken-Andersen Kicker of the Year Award twice (2015 and 2017). Oakes graduated IU as the program’s leader in field goals (69), and second in extra points (147) and total points (354). He finished his career 69-of-90 on field goals and 147-of-154 on extra points.
“It’s an amazing honor and I am just extremely thankful to even be mentioned with a group of players of such high caliber and accomplishments,” Oakes told Hoosier Huddle. “It’s just nice to see all the hard work I put in during my time in Bloomington get recognized by others. There were many other accomplished kickers that could have been selected, many that I even looked up to during my time, so it’s just something I’m very proud of.”
Oakes’ career at IU wasn’t always easy however. After winning the Bakken-Anderson Award in 2015, Oakes had a field goal called ‘no good’ in Indiana’s overtime loss in the Pinstripe Bowl that was controversial at best. The miss, which clinched the loss for IU, weighed on Oakes for the entire 2016 season.
“2016 was a tough year for me. It brought on quite a bit of stress and just felt like it never left my body and week after week it just kept building” Oakes said. Oakes went just 16-of-26 on field goals in 2016 including another big one in the Hoosiers 26-24 loss to Utah in the Foster Farms Bowl. Being a competitor, Oakes knew he had to change something.
“After the season concluded I had to get my body back to the shape that I knew would make me successful. I went from 229 pounds to 195 at the start of the season. I also had to change the way I mentally approached things when it came to my job. I didn’t look at much of the 2016 film either” Oakes told Hoosier Huddle. “Honestly, without (holder) Drew Conrad and (long snapper) Dan Godsil and the support I felt from the specialist group and the team that 2017 year wouldn’t have gone the way it did for me.”
That weight was lifted off of his shoulders at the end of regulation during a homecoming game against Michigan in 2017.
“My favorite moment was in 2017 against Michigan” Oakes recalled. “Our field goal unit made a 46-yard field goal to force overtime as time expired. To me it was the biggest weight off my shoulders (especially after everything that transpired from the pinstripe bowl and the year after). It was the kick that helped me mentally get over the hump that I felt was holding me down, on and off the field. It was the culmination of our field goal unit’s hard work over the winter/spring/summer.”
Oakes was having a fantastic year up to that point and it was highlighted by a 51-yard bomb of a field goal at Virginia that helped the Hoosiers take momentum. He finished that season 16-of-17 on field goals and 38-of-39 on extra points before earning his second Bakken-Anderson Award at season’s end.
Oakes is currently enrolled at IUPUI in hopes of getting into their physical therapy program and is working at Hayden Physical Therapy in Greenwood. “It’s a different chapter and it’s not the football chapter that I knew my entire life but the change has been good. Good for the growth of myself mentally and physically but I wouldn’t change my football experience at Indiana for the world” Oakes said.