Bud Wilkinson Leads All OU Football Coaches with Four “Perfect” Seasons
By Chip Rouse
In the history of OU football – which dates back to 1895 – the Sooners have gone undefeated 14 times.
Eleven of those 14 unbeaten seasons have been “perfect” in the sense that no games ended in a tie.
The seasons in which the Sooners went undefeated have ranged from two-game seasons, which was the norm back in the late 1800s before the turn of the century, to a 13-game schedule, which was the case the last time Oklahoma recorded an undefeated, untied season, in 2000.
With 14 undefeated seasons all-time, Oklahoma is tied for sixth nationally with Harvard. Two other Ivy League schools, Yale and Princeton, rank one-two on the all-time list, with 30 and 29 undefeated years, respectively. They also have much longer institutional history than many of the major college football programs.
In the Bud Wilkinson years, from 1947 to 1963, Oklahoma went undefeated four times, including three years in succession (1954-56, during the Sooners’ epic 47-game winning streak). All four were perfect seasons. Wilkinson’s teams also lost just once in a season six different times. No other Oklahoma head coach can make those claims.
The late, great Bennie Owen, the first Sooner football coach to win 100 games, had three perfect seasons on the gridiron in 22 years of coaching.
Barry Switzer had two undefeated Oklahoma teams, only one of which was a perfect season, and six years when his teams lost just once.
Bob Stoops owns one of the 11 perfect seasons in OU football history, but the best his team since the 13-0 2000 national championship season was 2004, when the Sooners went 12-1. The one loss that season did not come until the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) National Championship game, a humbling 55-19 beatdown by USC that still stings today.
Of the Sooners seven national championships, as recognized by the Associated Press season-ending college rankings, only four were in seasons when Oklahoma posted a perfect record. Three times when the Sooners were crowned national champions (1950, 1975 and 1985) they suffered a single loss.
Interestingly, the 1950 national-champion Oklahoma team lost only once, and that was in a postseason in the Orange Bowl, to Kentucky. The Sooners were ranked No. 1 in the AP poll coming into that game. Despite a 13-7 defeat to the then-No. 7-ranked Kentucky Wildcats, Oklahoma was still awarded the national championship, the first in program history.