Former Sooner football All-American Billy Krisher to enter Oklahoma HOF
By Chip Rouse
Former Sooner football All-American Billy Krisher was perhaps the greatest offensive lineman to play football at Oklahoma.
Krisher, who played for the legendary Bud Wilkinson at Oklahoma in the mid-1950s, was one of the big guys upfront — although he weighed only around 216 pounds — in an offense that led the country in 1955 and 1956 in rushing offense and total offense. Players played both ways back then, but Krisher was best known for his play on offense.
Krisher, who will turn 83 in September, was only the third player in Oklahoma football history to become a two-time All-American, and in 1957 he earned consensus All-America honors.
Next Monday, the native Oklahoman will be enshrined in the Oklahoma Sports Hall of Fame. Joining Krisher in the 2017 induction class is another Sooner football All-American, Jason White, along with Bryant “Big Country Reeves, who played basketball at Oklahoma State in the early to mid-1990s, Olympic wrestling gold medalist Doug Blubaugh, Olympic decathlete Jeff Bennett, pro baseball player Bill Greason and college wrestling coach David James.
At the time Krisher was being recruited out of Midwest City (Okla.) High School by both Oklahoma and Oklahoma A&M, a young, first-year coach named Terry Brennan at Notre Dame was also hot on the recruiting trail after Krisher (even back then there were out-of-state, national recruiting battles).
Back in those days, when Wilkinson made a personal visit to your home, and especially at the home of an Oklahoma resident, it was almost a slam dunk that you would be playing your college football at OU. Wilkinson did make such a visit to the Krisher home, and the rest is history.
When Krisher signed on to play for Wilkinson at Oklahoma, the Sooners had won one national championship (1950) and were nine games into their NCAA-record 47-game winning streak. In the three seasons Krisher played for the Sooners (1955-57), Oklahoma won 31 consecutive games, including back-to-back national championships in 1955-56.
Oklahoma did not lose a game while Krisher was there until the eighth game of the 1957 season, the epic 7-0 loss to Notre Dame (the team that had recruited him some four years earlier) that ended the Sooners’ unprecedented consecutive-win streak. That would be the only game OU would lose that season and the only loss the Sooners would suffer in Krisher’s college career.
Krisher was drafted in third round (but just the 32nd player selected overall) of the 1958 NFL Draft by the Pittsburgh Steelers. He played two season with the former Dallas Texans (now the Kansas City Chiefs) of the American Football League.