Oklahoma football: Numbers to know before Red River Showdown II

It has been 115 years since the Oklahoma football Sooners and Texas have played twice in the same season.

There have been 113 football games played between the Longhorns and Sooners in five score and 18 years (118), and Texas has prevailed in 55 percent of them (62-46-5).

Texas is the only Big 12 team that owns a winning record against Oklahoma all-time. Since 1971, however, the Sooners are 25-20-3 against Texas, and in the Big 12 era (1996-present), OU is 13-10 against the Longhorns, including winning six of the last nine games and 12 of the last 19.

Until 1996, the Sooners and Longhorns belonged to different conferences. Beginning in 1900, nearly every year thereafter, the two teams played each other as nonconference opponents.  Only twice in the long history of the series have they played each other more than once in a season. The last time that happened was in 1903, four years before Oklahoma officially became a state.

The two teams battled to a 6-6 tie at Texas in the first of the two games in 1903. A month later the scene shifted to Norman, but that didn’t seem to matter as the Longhorns won  11-5. In 1901, Texas swept the two games, winning 12-6 and 11-0, handing Oklahoma its only two losses in a five-game season.

Saturday’s Big 12 Championship game marks the first time Oklahoma and Texas have played for a postseason bowl or conference championship.

Besides the 1901 season, this is only the second time the Sooners have faced a team it lost to earlier in the same season. In 1978, Barry Switzer’s No. 1-ranked OU team lost to Nebraska 17-14. Those same two teams met again on Jan. 1 in the Orange Bowl, and the Sooners avenged the earlier loss with a 31-24 victory over the Huskers. The regular-season loss to Nebraska was Oklahoma’s only loss that season.

Lincoln Riley’s Sooners are hoping to reprise the 1978 Oklahoma turn-around when they get their second shot at the Longhorns this season on Saturday — not at the Cotton Bowl, but across the metroplex at JerryWorld in Arlington — in a game with considerably high stakes.

Here are some more numbers to know ahead of 2018 Oklahoma-Texas Part II:

1 vs. 3 — The Big 12 Championship will feature the Big 12’s No. 1 offense (also No. 1 nationally) against the third-best defensive team in the conference. The Sooners average 50.3 points and 583.8 yards of offense per game; Texas allows 25.2 points and 392.2 yards per game.

4 — Consecutive Big 12 titles the Sooners will have with a win over Texas on Saturday.

6 — Texas is making its sixth Big 12 Championship appearance. The Longhorns are 3-2 in their five previous appearances.

8 — Oklahoma’s Big 12 Championship game wins in nine appearances. The Sooners have more championship game wins than any other Big 12 teams has championship appearances.

8.92 — Average yards per play by the Oklahoma offense this season. The all-time NCAA record is 8.6 set by Hawaii in 2006.

9 — Nine of the Longhorns’ 12 games this season were decided by one score, including their 45-42 win over Oklahoma.

14 — Combined Big 12 football championships won by Oklahoma and Texas in the 22-year history of the Big 12.

45 — Oklahoma has scored at least 45 points in eight straight games. The Sooners’ opponents have scored 40 or more points in each of the last four games.

89.5 — Oklahoma’s scoring percentage when it reaches the red zone this season, best in the Big 12.

95.3 — The scoring average of OU’s opponents when they reach the end zone this season. That ranks last in the Big 12 in red zone defense and 128th out of 129 teams. Texas ranks second in the Big 12 in red zone defense

2008 — The last time Texas won as many as nine games in a season. The Longhorns finished the 2018 regular season with a 9-3 record and were 7-2 in the Big 12. It also was the last time the Sooners and Longhorns faced each other as Associated Press top-10 teams.

80,000 — Capacity of AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, site of the 2018 Big 12 Football Championship. The Cotton Bowl in Dallas, where OU and Texas play in early October every season, seats 92,100.

Statistical information that appears in this article was sourced from the 2018 Oklahoma Football Game Notes and the 2018 Texas Football Game Notes, prepared in advance of Saturday’s Big 12 Championship game by the athletic departments of the respective schools.