The Oklahoma Sooners football program is a college football team that represents the University of Oklahoma (variously "Oklahoma" or "OU"). The Oklahoma Sooners are a perennial powerhouse. As of 2008, ESPN ranked the Oklahoma Sooners as the most prestigious college football program since 1936. The team is currently a member of the Big 12 Conference, which is a Division I Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The program began in 1895 and is the most successful program of the modern era (post World War II) with 524 wins and a winning percentage of .761 since 1945. The program has seven national championships, 42 conference championships, 148 All-Americans (70 consensus), and five Heisman Trophy winners. In addition, the school has had five coaches and 17 players inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and holds the record for the longest winning streak in Division I-FBS history with 47 straight victories. The team is currently coached by Bob Stoops and home games are played at the Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman, Oklahoma.
History
Pre-Owen era (1895–1904)
The storied football program at the University of Oklahoma is the most famous aspect of Sooner athletics. Football at Oklahoma made its start in September 1895, 12 years before statehood and one year after the first organized football game in Oklahoma Territory. The team was organized by John A. Harts, a student from Winfield, Kansas who had played the game in his home state. That first team was composed of mostly non-students, such as a local fireman. That first "season" saw the team go 0–1, being blanked 0–34 by a more experienced Oklahoma City Town Team (the Sooners could not even muster a first down). The first game was played on a field of low prairie grass just northwest of the current site of Holmberg Hall. Several members of the Oklahoma team were injured, including Coach Harts, and by the end of the game, the Oklahoma team was borrowing members from the opposing squad so they would have a full lineup. After that year, Harts left Oklahoma to prospect for gold in the Arctic.
The team got its first real coach in 1897 when the new modern language professor, Vernon Louis Parrington, was drafted as head coach (they played two games in 1896 with no coach). Parrington played some football at Harvard and was more exposed to football because he was from the east coast. In his four years as head coach (1897–1900), Parrington's teams racked up 9 wins, to one loss and two ties. After the 1900 season, football began interfering with Parrington's teaching, his real passion. He stepped down as head coach shortly thereafter and went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1928 at the University of Washington.
The Sooners had three coaches over the next four seasons. Fred Roberts led the Sooners to a 3–2 season in 1901, Mark McMahon recorded an 11–7–3 record in his two years as coach from 1902 and 1903, and Fred Ewing recorded a 4–3–1 record in 1904. The most notable event of those four years came in 1904 when Oklahoma had its first match against its instate rival, Oklahoma A&M. The game was played on November 6, 1904 at a park in Guthrie, Oklahoma. The Oklahoma team soundly defeated the Oklahoma Aggies 75–0, but it was an unusual touchdown that is remembered most of that game.
Bedlam football, the athletic rivalry between the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University, was born that day.
Owen era (1905–1946)
After ten years of football, the program began to get serious and started looking for a permanent coach, Bennie Owen. Owen was a quarterback on the undefeated Kansas team of 1899 led by famous coach Fielding Yost. Owen's previous team beat Oklahoma twice in 1903 and 1904, so the Sooners were familiar with his ability. Owen's first two years at Oklahoma were spent between Norman and Arkansas City as Oklahoma did not have in the budget enough funds to keep him there all year around. The early years of Owen's tenure were tough for budget reasons. Due to a low travel budget, his teams would regularly have to play as many as three games in one trek. For instance, in 1905, his squad played three teams in three Kansas cities in five days and again in 1909 when they played three games in Missouri and Texas in six days. In Owen's first year, 1905, he gave Oklahoma its first victory over rival Texas, defeating them 2–0. Owen's first dominant team came in 1908 when they went 8–1–1, losing only to the powerful Kansas team. His 1908 team used hand-offs directly to large runners as the forward pass was just becoming common. His 1911 team, on the other hand, had several small and fast players that the quarterback would pass directly to. That team went 8–0. Owen had two more undefeated seasons in 1915 and 1918. 1920 was also Oklahoma's first season in the stronger Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association. In the new conference, they went 6–0–1 tying only Kansas State University. During Owen's 22 year career at Oklahoma, he went 122–54–16, a 67.7% winning percentage. In 1951, he became the first person from Oklahoma to be inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. It was the inaugural year for the Hall of Fame and Owen was inducted along with many of the biggest names of the game including Walter Camp, Knute Rockne and Fielding Yost.
The next two coaches that came after Owen, Adrian Lindsey and Lewie Hardage, amounted to little, going a combined 30–31–10 over eight seasons. The next coach, Lawrence "Biff" Jones, went 9–6–3 in his two seasons at the helm, but he is credited for reining in the athletic department's administration, finances, and methods. The whole football program was placed on a solid footing necessary for success in modern times. Jones was a "blunt-spoken, hard-nosed military man" who graduated from West Point in 1917. Jones coached Army from 1926 to 1929 and then was the head coach of Louisiana State University. He was fired from LSU after refusing then-governor Huey Long's request to address the team during halftime of a game. His tenure at Oklahoma came during the Dust Bowl. The dust storms were so thick it would block the sun and the players would be covered in dust at the end of practice. In 1954, Jones was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame.
In 1937, Tom Stidham became the coach. Stidham took the solid footing put in place by Jones and stood on it. In his four seasons, Stidham's team went 27–8–3 for a winning percentage of 75%. When he left in 1941, his assistant coach, Dewey Luster succeeded him. After Luster's first season, a 6–3 season, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. As was the case with schools all over the country, many players left the team to join the military.
Luster stepped down after the 1945 season due to ill health. The OU Board of Regents interviewed several candidates for the new head coaching job and one of those men was Jim Tatum. With him, he brought another coach, Bud Wilkinson, who would be his assistant coach. The Board was so impressed with Wilkinson that they considered hiring him for the head coaching position but decided against it as it would be unethical. In the end, they decided to hire Tatum and his assistant over several other coaches including Paul "Bear" Bryant. Tatum had a relatively successful season finishing with an 8–3 record including a 73–12 win over Oklahoma A&M. When Tatum left for Maryland after the 1946 season, Wilkinson stepped up.
Wilkinson era (1947–1963)
Bud Wilkinson was a quarterback for the University of Minnesota and won three straight national championships with them in the 1930s. His coaching career began at Syracuse University and then at his alma mater Minnesota. After his service in the U.S. Navy in World War II, he began coaching at a naval academy in Iowa with Jim Tatum. When Tatum came to Oklahoma, he brought Wilkinson with him. Wilkinson went 7–2–1 in his first year and shared the conference title with Kansas for the second year in a row.
In 1949, the Sooners went undefeated, defeating LSU 35 to 0 in their back yard at the Sugar Bowl. However, the game is best known as the "spy incident" since former LSU player Piggy Barnes was caught spying on the Sooner's practices. Despite going undefeated and winning their bowl game, the Sooners were denied a national championship since it was awarded to Notre Dame, a team that did not play in a bowl game. Wilkinson went on to win the school its first national championship in 1950 despite the fact they lost The Sugar Bowl against Bear Bryant's Kentucky (11-1) team which made them Co-National Champions with Kentucky since AP voting took place before the Sugar Bowl game was played. That loss was the Sooners' first loss since a season opener loss to Santa Clara University in 1948, 31 games earlier. It was in 1951, while seeki
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