Stormin in Norman
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Oklahoma football: The most iconic number in Sooner gridiron history

By Chip Rouse

NORMAN, OK - NOVEMBER 11: Oklahoma Sooners fans cheer during the game against the TCU Horned Frogs at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on November 11, 2017 in Norman, Oklahoma. Oklahoma defeated TCU 38-20. (Photo by Brett Deering/Getty Images) *** Local Caption ***
NORMAN, OK - NOVEMBER 11: Oklahoma Sooners fans cheer during the game against the TCU Horned Frogs at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on November 11, 2017 in Norman, Oklahoma. Oklahoma defeated TCU 38-20. (Photo by Brett Deering/Getty Images) *** Local Caption *** /
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There a few sports records that may forever stand the test of time. Oklahoma football owns one of them.

Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. Cal Ripken’s 2,632 consecutive-games streak. Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game. UCLA’s seven consecutive college basketball national championships and 10 in 12 years.

You can add Oklahoma’s epic 47-game winning streak to that memorable list of indelible accomplishments.

The Sooners’ 1953 season began with a 28-21 loss at home to then No. 1-ranked Notre Dame. That was followed by a 7-7 tie at Pittsburgh the next weekend. Oklahoma was ranked sixth in the country in the Associated Press preseason poll to start the 1953 season, but had dropped to 16th by the time the third game rolled around, the annual Red River battle royal against Texas.

Oklahoma picked up its first win of the season with a narrow 19-14 decision over the hated Longhorns.

Little did Bud Wilkinson’s Sooners know then, but the 1953 win over Texas marked the beginning of a remarkable 47-game win streak spanning 1,512 days, or nearly four seasons.

Oklahoma finished out the 1953 season with nine straight wins to end the year at 9-1-1. The Sooners were perfect in 1954, 1955 and 1956, going 31-0 during that span, including back-to-back national championships in 1955 and ’56, the first two in the school’s history.

The Sooners posted victories in the first seven games of the 1957 season. A convincing 39-14 win over Missouri extended the streak to 47 games. From the beginning of the 1954 season, OU was never ranked lower the No. 3 in the nation in the AP poll.

Oklahoma Sooners Football
Oklahoma Sooners Football /

Oklahoma Sooners Football

On Nov. 16, 1957, the Sooners were home to host Notre Dame, the last team to beat Oklahoma, 49 games ago. The No. 2-ranked Sooners were a three-touchdown favorite over an unranked and unheralded Fighting Irish team that just the season before had suffered its first losing season in 24 years.

Oklahoma had contributed to Notre Dame’s miserable 1956 season, handing the Irish a 40-0 humbling in front of a Notre Dame home crowd.

The 1957 game turned into a defensive battle and was scoreless going into the fourth quarter, when Notre Dame mounted a 20-play, 80-yard touchdown drive. The Irish’s Dick Lynch capped the drive, catching a short pass and taking it in for what proved to be the winning score and ending what still stands as the longest win streak in college football history by a major college program. (Mount Union, in Pennsylvania, a Division III program, has twice exceeded OU’s 47-game streak.)

The Sooners’ 47-game win streak wasn’t the only Sooner football milestone that came to an end on that 1957 fall afternoon in Norman. OU had not been shutout in more than 120 games.

In talking about the shocking loss afterwards with reporters, OU’s Wilkinson was quoted as saying:

"“There wasn’t anything mysterious about it. We just go beat.”"

One newspaper wrote:

"“Even the nuns were astounded,”"

The closest any major college team has come to the Sooners’ remarkable record in a 39-game win streak from 1908-1914.

The Sooners also own a 31-game win streak, posted between 1948-50, also under Bud Wilkinson, that ranks ninth all-time in college football history.

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