Oklahoma football fans know not to overlook an underdog Kansas
By Chip Rouse
Oklahoma football fans know all too well the cost of overlooking an underdog Kansas team.
The Sooners have an overwhelming 77-27-6 advantage in the 110 games with Kansas and have prevailed in the last 15 games between the two schools. But despite OU’s dominance in the overall series, it hasn’t always been that way.
Kansas won the first eight games in the series, which began in 1903. In fact, the Sooners scored a total of just nine points in the eight games, and they failed to score in the other sports. In the first 25 games in the series, Kansas won 15, Oklahoma 8 and two ended in a tie.
Prior to the current 15-game winning streak by the Sooners, OU dropped three straight games to the Jayhawks and four of the previous six.
Oklahoma Sooners Football
Sixteen of Kansas’ 27 victories over Oklahoma were recorded before 1931. Since 1965, however, the Sooners have won 42 of 48, or 88 percent, of the games against Kansas.
Two of the six games the Sooners have lost to the Jayhawks in the last 54 years are contests that longtime OU fans will not soon forget.
November 8, 1975 — Kansas 23, No. 2 Oklahoma 3
Oklahoma entered its 1975 game with Kansas riding a 28-game winning streak and a No. 2 national ranking.
The Sooners were coming off of a national championship season the year before, and Barry Switzer’s team was loaded with talent on both sides of the ball. The offense included Steve Davis at quarterback, running backs Joe Washington, Elvis Peacock and a young Billy Sims. The Wishbone-oriented Sooners rarely put the ball in the air, but when they did Tinker Owens and Billy Brooks were playmakers averaging over 20 yards per catch.
The Sooners were no slouch on defense either, led by defensive linemen Lee Roy and Dewey Selmon, defensive end Jimbo Elrod, linebacker Daryl Hunt and defensive backs Zac Henderson and Scott Hill.
The 1975 edition of the Jayhawks was not nearly as bad as the team has become in recent years, but it still wasn’t at Oklahoma’s level. Kansas came into the 1975 game with a decent 5-3 record.
The first-half turned out to be a defensive battle, with Kansas taking a surprising 7-3 lead into the locker room at halftime.
Converted defensive back Nolan Cromwell, who went on to 11-year NFL career as a defensive back with the Los Angeles Rams, led the Kansas offense at quarterback. Kansas also ran the Wishbone offense, which the Sooners, of all teams, should have been well familiar with.
Cromwell did not throw a single pass in the game, but the Jayhawks matched the vaunted Oklahoma rushing attack with 235 ground yards of their own, compared with 265 rushing yards by the Sooners.
The Sooners outgained Kansas in the game (328 to 235), but coughed up the ball eight times, all in the second half (four lost fumbles and four interceptions), ending any opportunity they had to reach the end zone. The OU offense had not scored fewer than 20 points in any game in their 28-game winning streak
Kansas managed 16 second-half points and claimed one of the biggest upsets of the 1975 college football season, defeating Oklahoma 23-3.
That was the only game the Sooners would lose that season. They finished with an 11-1 record, including a 14-6 victory over fifth-ranked Michigan, which earned the Sooners back-to-back national championships.
Oct. 27, 1984 — Kansas 28, Oklahoma 11
Nine years after the monumental Kansas upset of No. 2-ranked Oklahoma in Norman, another No. 2-ranked Sooner team coached by Barry Switzer traveled north to the Sunflower State to take at 2-5 Jayhawk squad. OU entered the game with a 5-0-1 record, but there were some warning signs on the horizon.
Two weeks before, No. 2 Oklahoma and No. 1 Texas had fought to a 15-15 draw, and the week before heading to Kansas the Sooners barely got by unranked Iowa State by a 12-10 score.
Freshman quarterback Troy Aikman led OU to a first-quarter field goal to give the Sooners a 3-0 lead after one quarter.
Kansas managed a touchdown and a field goal in the second quarter, while the powerful Oklahoma running game struggled getting on track. As a result, the Jayhawks took a 10-3 lead into halftime.
A Kansas field goal was the only scoring in the third quarter, so the teams began the fourth quarter with Kansas leading 13-3. The Jayhawks took control of the game for good over the final 15 minutes, adding 15 more points. Meanwhile, the Sooners scored their only touchdown of the game with just three seconds remaining. They added a two-point conversion, but the late charge fell way short, as Kansas pulled another upset over the highly favored Sooners.
Oklahoma produced just 163 yards of offense and just 2.4 yards per play. As was typical of the Wishbone offense, the Sooners put the ball on the ground five times in the game with the Kansas defense recovering three of them.
The Kansas loss was one of two Oklahoma suffered in the 1984 season. OU finished with a 9-2-1 record and ranked No. 6 in the final Associated Press Top 25.