Oklahoma football: Ranking the the Sooner teams of the past seven decades
By Chip Rouse
The 1990s were about as disappointing as it gets for Oklahoma football, at least relative to the 10 decades of Sooner football that preceded it. The Sooners’ winning percentage in the 112 games played in the decade of the ’90s (.543) is the worst in OU football history.
Four head coaches combined for 61 Oklahoma wins during this period, including one season under Bob Stoops, whose inaugural season at OU was in 1999. Gary Gibbs was the winningest of the five Sooner coaches during that era with a record of 37-19-2 in five seasons.
Howard Schnellenberger replaced Gibbs in 1995, followed by John Blake from 1996-98. The Sooners were a combined 17-27-1 in the four seasons under those two coaches. What really characterized the Sooners’ drastic decline during this time was a combined record of 2-8-1 against Texas, Oklahoma State and Nebraska, OU’s three biggest rivals.
The first six seasons of this decade, Oklahoma was a member of the Big Eight Conference. The Sooners finished no higher than third place, which they did twice (1990 and 1991) during the final years of the Big Eight.
As a member of the expanded Big 12 Conference, Oklahoma finished fourth out of six teams in the South Division three times and moved up one spot, to third in the South, in the initial season under Stoops.
The Sooners reached the requisite win level to make four postseason bowl appearance in the 1990s, splitting the four bowl games.
It was a lean decade by Oklahoma standards in terms of All-Americans. Only two Sooners were voted to First Team All-America status during the decade: linebacker Joe Bowden and defensive end Cedric Jones.