Editor’s note: Continuing throughout the month of August, I will be counting down the days to the season-opening kickoff on the road with the University of Houston Cougars, providing fun historical facts about Oklahoma football and tidbits about the upcoming 2016 season.
The Sooners have amassed 861 all-time wins and a record of 861-319-53 over 1,233 games in 121 college football seasons. Their .700 overall winning percentage ranks in the top-five in college football history.
Nearly 75 percent of those wins have come in the last 70 years. Since 1946, or the end of World War II, Oklahoma owns a record of 617-187-13 and a .760 winning percentage. According to information provided by the University of Oklahoma athletic department, that win percentage is the best in the nation over that period of time.
The best decade for Oklahoma football was the 1950s. Bud Wilkinson’s teams dominated college football during those 10 seasons, winning three national championships, producing three undefeated seasons and an unprecedented 47-game winning streak.
Wilkinson’s Sooner teams were 93-10-2 (.890) in the decade of the 1950s, the best 10-year winning percentage in Oklahoma football history. Oklahoma was 60-1-1 in Big Seven play, winning the conference championship all 10 seasons.
In the 1960s, Oklahoma came back to the pack somewhat under four different head coaches (Wilkinson, Gomer Jones, Jim Mackenzie and Chuck Fairbanks), with a .600 win percentage and a 62-40-2 overall record. But the Sooners were back at the top of their game in the decade of the 1970s.
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The Wishbone offense may have been invented in Texas, but it was perfected in Oklahoma on the watch of the Sooners second all-time winningest head coach, Barry Switzer. The Sooners rolled to 102 wins from 1970 through 1979 and an overall record of 102-13-2 and an .870 winning percentage.
After a very un-Oklahoma-like football decade in the 1990s (the Sooners were just 61-51-3 over those 10 seasons and 36-36-2 in conference play), Bob Stoops came to town and completely revitalized a proud program that had fallen into the abyss.
From 2000 to 2009, Stoops’ Oklahoma teams won 110 of 134 games, including a national championship in 2000, for a winning percentage of .820, the third decade since the 1950s in which the Sooners won over 80 percent of their games.
That win percentage has shot up even more dramatically at home during the Stoops reign. Oklahoma is 98-6 at home since 1999 and has sold out every single home game – 105 and counting – since Stoops arrived on the scene.