Oklahoma football: Ranking the the Sooner teams of the past seven decades
By Chip Rouse
#1 — 1950s Oklahoma Sooners football (93-10-2)
The Oklahoma Sooners of the 1950s under head coach Bud Wilkinson not only were some of the greatest teams that ever wore an OU uniform, but were responsible for putting the Sooners on the college football map.
Oklahoma’s 93-10-2 overall record and .895 winning percentage in the 10 seasons of the 1950s tops every other decade in the 122-year history of Sooner football.
This is the decade in which the Sooners won their first three national titles, the first one coming in 1950 and the other two in back-to-back years (1955 and ’56). It is also the era of Oklahoma’s unprecedented 47-game winning streak, which began three games into the 1953 season and did not end until 47 games later, eight games into the 1957 season.
From 1953 through the 1957 season, Wilkinson’s Sooners won 60 games and lost just three times. The Sooners were 31-0 between 1954 and 1956.
Halfback Billy Vessels scored 15 touchdowns in leading Oklahoma to a 10-1 season and the national championship in 1950, and two years later won the Heisman Trophy, the Sooners’ first of five Heisman winners.
In addition to Vessels, some of the other great Oklahoma players of this decade included halfbacks Tommy McDonald and Clendon Thomas, quarterbacks Eddie Crowder and Jimmie Harris and offensive linemen Jerry Tubbs, J.D. Roberts and Bill Krisher.
Next: The 30 best games in Sooner football history
Wilkinson led the Sooners to a Big Seven championship all 10 seasons in the decade.