Oklahoma Football 2016: Season Kickoff in 25 Days
By Chip Rouse
Continuing through the month of August I will be counting down to the opening kickoff of the 2016 Oklahoma football season with articles offering fun historical facts and other informative material to get Sooner fans ready for another thrilling season of OU gridiron action.
Today we take a look at Oklahoma’s football dominance against teams in the Big 12 and the previous league iterations that the Sooners have been a part of (e.g., Big Eight, Big Seven, etc.).
The team that the Sooners have historically dominated the most of the conference foes they play virtually every season is the Iowa State Cyclones.
Oklahoma has won the last 17 games between these two longtime foes who have met a total of 80 times in a series that began back in 1928. The Sooners have prevailed in 73 of the 80 games in the series and there have been two ties. That also means that the Cyclones have never beaten Oklahoma as a member of the Big 12. OU is 12-0 vs. Iowa State in the 20 years the Big 12 has been in existence.
In addition to its current 17-game win streak over Iowa State, Oklahoma also won 23 consecutive games over the Cyclones from 1937 to 1959.
Texas is the only current Big 12 school against which Oklahoma does not have a winning record. These two Red River rivals have played 110 times dating back to 1900. Texas has won 61 times, Oklahoma 44 and there have been five games that ended in a tie. In the Big 12 era, however, the Sooners own an 11-9 advantage over the Longhorns, and Bob Stoops owns a 10-7 mark over the Sooners’ hated rivals from the Lone Star State.
Oklahoma also has a 110-game history with its in-state rivals Oklahoma State. That all-time series has been lopsided in favor of the Crimson and Cream, with the Sooners holding an 85-18-7 advantage.
The Sooners also have been largely successful against the two conference teams from the Sunflower State, winning over 70 percent of their games all-time against both Kansas and Kansas State.
Given the relatively recent success of Kansas State under head coach Bill Snyder, you would intuitively think that Oklahoma’s all-time series record would be better much better against Kansas than it is versus K-State. But that isn’t the case. Oklahoma has won 73 games against both teams, but Kansas has beaten the Sooners 27 times, while Kansas State owns only 19 victories all-time vs. Oklahoma. The Jayhawks have also managed six ties with the Sooners.
If you look just at the Big 12 years, however, the Sooners are 11-2 against Kansas and just 9-5 in games with Kansas State.
Although OU has lost three of its last five games against the Baylor Bears, the Sooners are 17-3 in games with Baylor since Baylor became a member of the Big 12. That is the best mark by Oklahoma against any other Big 12 team in the past 20 seasons.
Here is how the Sooners have fared in football in the Big 12 era against the other current conference teams:
vs. Iowa State: 12-0
vs. Kansas: 11-2
vs. Oklahoma State: 14-6
vs. Texas Tech: 14-6
vs. Texas: 11-9
vs. Kansas State: 9-5
vs. West Virginia: 4-0
vs. TCU: 3-1