Oklahoma football: Barry Switzer had Nebraska’s number, a dozen times
By Chip Rouse
Oklahoma vs. Nebraska was once one of the biggest and most revered rivalries in college football. During the 1970s and ’80s there was no bigger game on the Oklahoma football schedule than the annual slugfest and stare down with the other Big Red, the Cornhuskers.
The Oklahoma-Nebraska football rivalry used to be an every year affair. For 99 years, the Sooners and Cornhuskers were members of the same conference, beginning in 1920, when Oklahoma was officially approved as a member of the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association. The very first meeting between the two schools, however, came eight years before they became affiliated with the same conference.
Nebraska prevailed 13-9 in the very first OU-Nebraska encounter in 1912. Since then the two teams have played a total of 86 times. The Sooners have won 45 times, the Cornhuskers 38 times and three games have ended in a tie.
When the Big 12 was formed in 1996, what was previously an annual rivalry became once every three and four years (two years on and two years off) because of a divisional format and a resulting unbalanced conference schedule.
The Sooners and the Cornhuskers played each other a total of nine times as members of the Big 12. The two teams split their eight regular-season meetings. They also were the last two teams to meet in a Big 12 championship game, in 2010, with Oklahoma winning 23-20 in a nail-biter. The two teams have not played each other since then because of Nebraska’s move to the Big Ten Conference in 2011.
From 1970 to 1990, the two Big Reds of the Big Eight met on the gridiron 21 times, with the Sooners prevailing in 13 of the contests. The 1971 game, pitting Chuck Fairbanks’ Sooners against Bob Devaney’s Cornhuskers, was billed as the Game of the Century. Nebraska was ranked No. 1 and the Sooners’ were right behind at No. 2 in the Associated Press rankings.
Oklahoma Sooners Football
Sports Illustrated ballyhooed the historic 1971 game on the cover of its Nov. 22, 1971, issue as “Irresistible Oklahoma Meets Immovable Nebraska.” The game itself lived up to all of its advanced billing. The two teams went back and forth in the nationally televised contest, with Nebraska holding serve at the end for a 35-31 victory.
The rivalry between the Sooners and the Cornhuskers was perhaps at its height during the Barry Switzer coaching era. Switzer went up against Nebraska head coach Tom Osborne 17 times between 1973 and 1988, and all 17 times one or both of the two teams was ranked.
Nebraska was ranked in the AP Top 25 all 17 times the Cornhuskers played Oklahoma when Switzer was the head coach. Oklahoma’s 12 wins in those 17 encounters with the archrival Cornhuskers stands as the most victories against a ranked opponent in the AP Poll era (from 1936 to present).
The two rivals played each other five times when one of the teams was ranked No. 1 (four times Nebraska was the top-ranked team). Oklahoma was 2-3 against the Cornhuskers in those five games, with the two wins coming against a top-ranked Nebraska team (1984 and 1987). The Sooners won both games, both on the road at Nebraska, by the identical score of 17-7. In the 1987 game, it was the No.1 Cornhuskers vs. No. 2 Oklahoma.
During the Switzer-Osborne coaching era, the two teams met six times with both schools ranked in the top six in the AP Poll.
Switzer says the one game in the “Battle of the Big Reds,” as the former Sooner head coach liked to call the rivalry, that stands out the most from when he was at the helm, and still hurts, was the regular-season showdown in 1978 at Nebraska.
The Sooners entered the 1978 game undefeated and as the No. 1 team in the country. They not only were the top-ranked team in the polls, but also owned one of the country’s best offenses, with eventual Heisman Trophy winner Billy Sims, and a top-rated defensive unit, as well.
Unfortunately the Oklahoma Wishbone offense put the ball on the ground nine times in the game — a clear recipe for disaster — squandering six of them. The Sooners ended up losing the game 17-14. Switzer quipped in an interview a number of years afterward that had his team not given the ball away so many times they could have “hung a 100 on them,” one of the phrases he liked to use back in the day.
OU got a rare chance to avenge that bitter loss in the bowl season that year when the No. 4-ranked Sooners drew the No. 6 Cornhuskers as their opponent in the Orange Bowl. That game ended much differently, with Oklahoma coming out on top, 31-24.
If you were/are a fan of this historic rivalry and have missed it the past six years, there is relief on the horizon. The Oklahoma-Nebraska rivalry series will be renewed in 2021 with a nonconference game to be played in Norman. The scene will shift to Lincoln, Neb., in 2022.