Stormin in Norman
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Oklahoma football: Six Sooner national championships have followed 7-0 starts

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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Saturday’s win over visiting West Virginia was the seventh Oklahoma football win of the season without a loss.

That might not seem like that big of a deal for a program that has been as historically successful on a national scale as Oklahoma, but the reality is the Sooners have experienced such a start just 15 times in the last 70 seasons and just 18 times in the school’s 125 years of gridiron history.

Before this season, the last time OU won seven consecutive games to begin the season was 15 years ago, in 2004. It was Bob Stoops’ sixth season as head coach of the Sooners. Oklahoma not only won its first seven games in 2004, but added five more on top of that, to improve to 12-0. including a Big 12 championship win over Colorado.

That was enough to earn Stoops and the No. 2-ranked Sooners a spot in the BCS National Championship game opposite No. 1 USC. Unfortunately, the Sooner Magic ran out at 12 wins that season, with USC handing OU a humbling 55-19 defeat.

Oklahoma Sooners Football
Oklahoma Sooners Football /

Oklahoma Sooners Football

The 2004 season was the fourth consecutive year that Oklahoma started out the season winning its first seven games. The Sooners advanced to the national championship in three of those four seasons and won it all in 2000, going a perfect 13-0 with a win in the Orange Bowl over Florida State.

Barry Switzer’s great Oklahoma teams of the 1970s and ’80s began the season 7-0 four different times (1974, 1975, 1978 and 1987), and Bud Wilkinson’s Sooners got off to 7-0 starts in six of his 17 seasons in Norman (1949, 1950, 1954, 1955, 1956 and 1957). In five of those 10 seasons in which OU won its first seven games, the Sooners went on to win the national championship, three under Wilkinson and two under Switzer.

In all ten of the seasons in which OU started out 7-0 under Wilkinson and Switzer, the Sooners ended up as conference champions.

Oklahoma also won its first seven games in the 1971 season, with Chuck Fairbanks as the head coach and Switzer as offensive coordinator (the only loss that season was a 35-31 defeat to Nebraska in a battle of unbeatens — the No.1 Cornhuskers vs. the No. 2 Sooners — in what at the time was billed as the Game of the Century.

In drawing a possible parallel between past seasons when Oklahoma began the season with seven consecutive wins, it is also interesting to point out that in all 18 seasons in Sooner football history when OU has started out 7-0, it has included a victory over Texas.

Historically, going 7-0 to start the season has portended good things for Oklahoma football. Five more wins just like it and we could be looking at another historic season.

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