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Oklahoma Football: The Sooners’ Measure of Success Is Championships

By Chip Rouse

Nov 14, 2015; Waco, TX, USA; A general view of the College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy during the game between the Baylor Bears and the Oklahoma Sooners at McLane Stadium. Oklahoma won 44-34. Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports
Nov 14, 2015; Waco, TX, USA; A general view of the College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy during the game between the Baylor Bears and the Oklahoma Sooners at McLane Stadium. Oklahoma won 44-34. Mandatory Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports /
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Success, like art appreciation, is in the eye as well as the mind of the beholder. Success by Oklahoma football standards, however, is measured by championships.

Dec 31, 2015; Miami Gardens, FL, USA; The Oklahoma Sooners run onto the field prior to the 2015 CFP semifinal at the Orange Bowl against the Clemson Tigers at Sun Life Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports
Dec 31, 2015; Miami Gardens, FL, USA; The Oklahoma Sooners run onto the field prior to the 2015 CFP semifinal at the Orange Bowl against the Clemson Tigers at Sun Life Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports /

The Oklahoma Sooners have been blessed with piles of success and plenty of championships in 121 seasons of collegiate football.

Winners of seven national championships, the Sooners have won a total of 45 conference championships in six different conferences. Their seven national championships are tied with USC (University of Southern California) for the most national titles in football.

Since 1936, or the first year of the Associated Press Top-25 poll, Alabama leads all FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) schools with 11 national titles. Notre Dame and Ohio State both are credited with eight national championships in the so-called modern era of college football.

Oklahoma won its first conference championship in 1915, its first season as a member of the Southwest Conference.

In 1920, the Sooners joined the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association. Those were not the finest years of Oklahoma football. The Sooners failed to win a conference title in nine seasons as a member of the MVIAA.

Oklahoma joined five other schools (Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa State and Kansas State) in 1929 to form the Big Six Conference. OU won five conference championships in the 19 seasons the Big Six was in existence.

In 1947, Colorado joined the league, and the Big Six became the Big Seven Conference. The Sooners dominated the Big Seven years, capturing the conference title – either shared or outright – in 11 consecutive seasons. No other Big Seven school won a conference championship over the 11-year lifetime of the Big Seven. The legendary Bud Wilkinson was the Oklahoma head coach the entire time the Sooners were part of the Big Seven Conference. During those years, Wilkinson’s teams never lost a conference game, compiling an overall league record of 68-0-2.

Nov 28, 2015; Stillwater, OK, USA; Oklahoma Sooners before the start of a game against the Oklahoma State Cowboys at Boone Pickens Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Alonzo Adams-USA TODAY Sports
Nov 28, 2015; Stillwater, OK, USA; Oklahoma Sooners before the start of a game against the Oklahoma State Cowboys at Boone Pickens Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Alonzo Adams-USA TODAY Sports /

Oklahoma won its first three national championships as a member of the Big Seven (1950, 1955 and 1956).

That domination continued when the conference expanded by one – adding what was then Oklahoma A&M – to form a new league known as the Big Eight.

The inaugural season of the Big Eight was 1959. The Sooners finished first that season and would go on to win 17 Big Eight titles in football, 12 of those coming in the years that Barry Switzer was the head coach at Oklahoma (1973-1988). Switzer’s teams also won three national championships (1974, 1975 and 1985).

The 1990s were down years based on the historical standards of Oklahoma football. From 1990 to 1998, the Sooners record through all games was a very un-OU-like 54-47-3. But then came the Bob Stoops era, beginning in 1999.

The Big 12 Conference, made up of the eight teams from the old Big Eight and four former  Southwest Conference teams (Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech and Baylor) came into being in 1996. Three years later Bob Stoops became the head coach of the Sooners. By his 16th season, Stoops had become the winningest coach in Oklahoma football history.

Under Stoops, the Sooners have won 168 games and lost just 46 times . His 2000 team won a national championship in just his second season in Norman. The Sooners have subsequently played in the national championship game three other times under Stoops (2003, 2004 and 2008 seasons) and last season advanced as one of the four teams participating in the College Football Playoff.

The Sooners have been Big 12 champions nine times in Stoops’ 17 seasons at Oklahoma. His teams are 50-27 against teams ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 at the time the Sooners played them. and OU has 18 victories under Stoops against teams in the AP Top 10

When you look back at the success of Oklahoma football since its first conference championship in 1915 to the present, a period of 100 years, you discover that the Sooners’ 45 conference titles averages out to be a championship every other year. That same average has held true in the 20-year history of the Big 12. The Sooners own conference trophies from nine of those seasons, more than three times the number of league crowns by the next best school (Texas with three Big 12 championships).

So it is easy to see why Oklahoma is considered a model of success – a.k.a. championships – in college football.

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