Oklahoma football: Sooners own 3 of the 9 longest college win streaks
By Chip Rouse
Among the epic historical accomplishments in 125 years of Oklahoma football is the incredible run of 47 consecutive wins produced between early in the 1953 season through eight games into the 1957 season.
Everyone is familiar with the time-worn cliché “records are made to be broken.” I’m not sure, however, it applies in this case.
It is hard for me to fathom — especially in this day and age of greater parity in college football and less of a delta between the haves and the have-nots — that any team, not the Alabamas, the Clemson or even the Oklahomas, would put together a sting of nearly four seasons without suffering a loss. Not in my lifetime, anyway.
The Oklahoma teams of Bud Wilkinson won three national championships and a remarkable 13 consecutive conference championships, but nothing rivaled the 47 straight wins the Sooners put together in the mid-1950s. Most of those 47 games were not close. In fact, 21 of the 47 consecutive victories were shutouts.
The streak is beautifully detailed in the book “47 Straight” (University of Oklahoma Press, 2003). written by longtime OU sports information director Harold Keith, with a foreward by Berry Tramel, sports columnist for The (Oklahoma City) Oklahoman.
The record-setting streak began with a 19-14 win over Texas, three games into the 1953 season and ended 47 games later with a 7-0 nationally televised home defeat to Notre Dame. eight games into the 1957 season. Ironically, Notre Dame was also the last team to beat the Sooners, when the No. 1-ranked Fighting Irish opened the 1953 season with a 28-21 victory over No. 6 Oklahoma.
The second longest win streak by an NCAA Division I school to Oklahoma’s 47 games was achieved long before Wilkinson and the Sooners began to make national headlines. The University of Washington won 40 straight games between 1908 and 1914, according to NCAA records. Yale twice won 37 games over two three-year periods in the late 1800s.
More recently, the Miami Hurricanes carved out 34 wins in a row from 2000 to 2002, Florida State won 29 straight between 2012 and 2014 and Clemson matched FSU’s 29 consecutive wins in 2018 and ’19.
In addition to their classic 47-game winning streak, Oklahoma also put together victory strings of 31 games (1948-50) and 28 games (1973-75). Those are the sixth and ninth longest win streaks in college football history.
The 31-game Sooner win streak also was on Wilkinson’s watch and actually preceded the 47-game streak by several years. The 28-game streak covered Barry Switzer’s first three seasons as head coach and included two national championship seasons (1974 and 1975).
Wilkinson’s 1948 OU team opened the season with a 20-17 loss at Santa Clara. That was the last time the Sooners would lose for three years before falling to Paul “Bear” Bryant and the Kentucky Wildcats 13-7 in the 1952 Sugar Bowl.
Oklahoma played 31 consecutive games under Switzer’s reign before losing a game. A 7-5 Kansas team was the spoiler, handing Switzer his first loss as a head coach, a stunning 23-3 defeat at home at Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.