Oklahoma football: It hasn’t been just about OU football in 2017-18
By Chip Rouse
Oklahoma football is and forever will be king in Sooner Nation.
It not only is the most followed of all the OU athletic programs, but has a storied and highly successful history that has made it so, as well as one of the elite brands in all of college sports.
Football clearly is the table setter insofar as the Oklahoma Sooner sports calendar is concerned, but Sooner fans should be proud and thankful, especially this past sports season (2017-18), for the number of OU athletic programs, beyond just football that achieved at a high national level, spanning the fall, winter and spring seasons.
The Sooners appeared in college football’s BCS Championship game four times, winning it all in 2000. Only Florida State made as many BCS appearances in the 15 seasons that national championship format was in place. OU football has appeared twice in the four seasons under the new College Football Playoff system, including this past season.
Oklahoma lost to Georgia in double overtime in one of the CFP semifinal games last season, but the Sooners still finished third in the final Associated Press and USA Today Coaches polls.
In the last seven decades, no college team has won more football games than the University of Oklahoma. As Sooner fans, we’ve come to expect an NCAA postseason appearance and to be in national championship contention virtually every season. It’s easy to see how it came to be that way with 51 all-time bowl appearances by OU (including 19 consecutively, the eighth longest active streak) and the fourth most bowl wins (29).
There is no question that football is the flagship of all Oklahoma athletic programs. It not only draws the highest attendance and brings in the most revenue, but in the case of the Sooners, it has the longest and most successful championship history and has long been considered an elite national brand.
Unlike many other major college programs, though, Oklahoma is no one-trick pony when it comes to championship runs in other sports. OU ranks 15th in the number of NCAA-sanctioned Division I national championships with 30 total, and less than one-third of that total were in football.
The Sooners are one of only a dozen schools that participated in a bowl game this past academic year (2017-18), in both the men’s and women’s NCAA Basketball Tournament, and the NCAA Baseball Championship. And that’s just a partial list of the OU athletic teams that participated in postseason NCAA championships this past year.
The Oklahoma softball team and the men’s golf team made what has come to be their annual NCAA postseason appearance in their respective sports again this year. Both programs were defending national champions in this year’s championships. They were unable to repeat, but both made an outstanding showing, despite falling short.
The softball Sooners have made 24 consecutive appearances in the NCAA Tournament, and the golf team advanced to NCAA postseason action for the eighth consecutive year in 2018.
The Sooner softball team, which was actually shooting for a third consecutive national title in softball, was eliminated in the Women’s College World Series in the semifinal round. The men’s golf team made it through the 54-hole stroke-play portion of the NCAA Golf Championship and was one of only eight teams that advanced to the match-play round before bowing out in the quarterfinals.
The OU women’s golf team also made it into NCAA postseason action, finishing 20th. Sooner junior Julienne Soo claimed 19th place on the individual leaderboard.
The Oklahoma men’s tennis team, which was runner-up for three consecutive years in the NCAA Championship.
And while we are recognizing OU national championships that are non-football related, no Oklahoma athletic program has more national titles since the last Sooner national championship in football than gymnastics.
Oklahoma has won 13 national championships in gymnastics since 2000, the last time the Sooners won a national crown in football. One of those 13 national titles in gymnastics was garnered in April, with the OU men’s squad winning their fourth consecutive NCAA championship and 12th in program history.
The OU women were seeking a third consecutive national title and their fourth all-time, but fell just short, finishing second to UCLA. Despite falling just short of a nation three-peat in 2018, the Sooners can take enormous pride in finishing in the top three in the NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championship in each of the past six years.
Football is the unequivocal king of the hill in terms of Oklahoma athletic programs, and it provides the fuel and a massive dose of the pride that has spawned national championship contenders in multiple Sooner programs, a distinction to which only a few major college institutions can lay claim.
Boomer Sooner!