No. 2 OU Football Meets No. 1 Ohio State in ‘All-Time’ September Showdown
By Chip Rouse
One week after the Associated Press released its All-Time Top 100, there are sure to be college fans across the country who are unhappy with their team’s placement in the poll. But you won’t find that from Ohio State and OU football fans.
The Buckeyes and the Sooners ranked one and two as the top two teams in college football over the 80-year history of the Associated Press poll, which introduced its first top-25 college football poll in 1936.
The timing of the AP All-Time poll couldn’t have been more perfect, with the Sooners and Buckeyes scheduled to face each other this season for the first time in 32 years and only the third time in the long history of these elite college football brands.
The two teams will actually play each other twice the next two seasons. This year’s game will take place at Oklahoma on Sept. 17 in perhaps the marquee matchup of the entire 2016 season in college football. A year from now the scene shifts to Columbus, Ohio.
The all-time series between OU and Ohio State, which consists of just two games, is deadlocked at a game apiece. Ironically, neither the Sooners nor the Buckeyes were able to win on their home field. Oklahoma prevailed at The Horseshoe at Ohio State, 29-28, on a game-winning field goal in 1977 by Uwe “The Foot” von Schamann. The Buckeyes returned the favor in Norman six seasons later, defeating the Sooners 24-14 in 1983.
Aside from their one-two ranking in the AP All-Time Top 100, it is fascinating how historically similar the Sooners and Buckeyes are in their wildly successful football histories.
According to the college football data base Winsipedia.com, Ohio State ranks fifth all-time in college football with 875 wins; Oklahoma is seventh with 861 total wins. The Buckeyes .722 all-time winning percentage ranks fourth among 129 FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) teams; the Sooners are fifth, with a winning percentage of .720.
Ohio State has appeared in the AP Top 25 a total of 854 times, more than any other college team. Oklahoma is third in that category, appearing in the AP poll 783 times to date since the first AP college football poll in 1936.
The best decade for Oklahoma appearances in the AP college football poll was in the 1950s, the Bud Wilkinson years. The Sooners appeared in 94 percent of the AP polls during those 10 seasons (1950-59). Ohio State’s best years were the 1970s, when the Buckeyes were ranked in the AP Top 25 almost 93 percent of the time during that decade.
These same two teams are one-two in the number of weeks they have appeared No. 1 in the poll. Ohio State has been in the top spot a total of 105 weeks. OU, meanwhile, has been ranked No. 1 in the AP poll a total of 101 weeks. The Sooners had been first in that category for a number of years until Ohio State held down the No. 1 spot for more than half the season a year ago.