Worst Oklahoma football loss ever? If not, it’s very close
By Chip Rouse
Kansas was Sooners Kryptonite in Barry Switzer years
Oklahoma won three national championships to go along with 12 Big Eight championships under head coach Barry Switzer. The Sooners were perennially among the nation’s top teams throughout Switzer’s 16 seasons as head coach.
On two separate occasions during Switzer’s head coaching reign at Oklahoma, Kansas. a school much better known for basketball than football, knocked off a No. 2-ranked Sooner team.
The first was on Nov. 8, 1975. Oklahoma had won its fourth national championship the year before and Switzer was 29-0-1 since becoming head coach at OU two and a half years before.
The Sooners were 8-0 as they got set to host Kansas on Nov. 8, 1975. The Jayhawks had won just one conference game the year before, but were 5-3 overall in 1975 when they traveled to Norman to take on the second-ranked Sooners. Oklahoma had scored 93 combined points in defeating Kansas the previous two seasons with Switzer at the helm.
KU quarterback Nolan Cromwell gave Oklahoma a dose of its own Wishbone medicine, commandeering the Jayhawks to a stunning 23-3 upset victory over the nation’s No. 2-ranked team. The Sooners lost four fumbles in the game and managed only a first-quarter field goal in coming up on the short-end of the score before a capacity home crowd of 70,000-plus.
Nine years later, in 1984, Kansas did it again. Oklahoma had climbed to No. 2 in the Associated Press Top 25 after beginning the season at No. 16. The Sooners were 5-0-1 when they traveled to Kansas in 1984, the tie coming against No. 1 Texas in the annual Red River Rivalry game.
As in the 1975 game with Kansas, the Sooners couldn’t muster much offense against a determined Jayhawk team playing at home. Kansas held a 13-3 lead going into the fourth quarter and added 15 more points in the final frame to close it out and hand OU its first loss of the season in a 28-11 shocker over the highly-ranked Sooners.