Sooners Football: Five Biggest OU Orange Bowl Wins

Jan. 3, 2001 – Oklahoma 13, Florida State 2

Bob Stoops was in his second full season as the Sooners’ head coach. Oklahoma had gone 7-5 in his inaugural season. The 2000 edition of Oklahoma football began the season ranked 19th in the AP preseason poll. By Week 8 and back-to-back victories over top-10 teams, the Sooners had advanced all the way to the top spot in the land.

Oklahoma had been led all year by the arm of quarterback Josh Heupel and an Air Raid passing attack the likes that no one who had followed Sooner football over the years had ever witnessed.

The Sooners knew they would need to generate plenty of offense to beat a Florida State team that possessed that season’s Heisman Trophy winner at quarterback in Chris Weinke and one of the country’s most prolific offenses.

You can imagine everyone’s surprise when the halftime score read Oklahoma 3, Florida State 0. The Sooners’ cashed in a 27-yard field goal by Tim Duncan to go to the locker room with a slim and somewhat surprising three-point advantage at the intermission.

Duncan added another field goal in the third quarter to extend the OU lead to a very precarious 6-0 with one quarter still to play. Time after time, the underrated Oklahoma defense registered critical stops against the high-powered Seminole offense.

The clincher came midway through the final period, when diminutive running back Quentin Griffin scooted his way through the tall trees and found his way to the end zone on a 10-yard burst to put the Sooners up 13-0 with precious time ticking off the clock.

Oklahoma held the potent Seminole offense to just 1 of 13 on third-down conversions and 200 yards below its season average of over 500 yards of total offense per game.

A perfect season was finished off with a seventh national championship, and it was the lockdown Oklahoma defense, not the offense, that got the job done.