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Oklahoma football: No Big 12 team has a title pedigree like OU

By Chip Rouse

ARLINGTON, TX - DECEMBER 07: (L-R) Todd Hudson #23 of the Oklahoma Sooners and teammate Nick Basquine #83 celebrate the teams 30-23 win over the Baylor Bears following the Big 12 Football Championship at AT&T Stadium on December 7, 2019 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)
ARLINGTON, TX - DECEMBER 07: (L-R) Todd Hudson #23 of the Oklahoma Sooners and teammate Nick Basquine #83 celebrate the teams 30-23 win over the Baylor Bears following the Big 12 Football Championship at AT&T Stadium on December 7, 2019 in Arlington, Texas. (Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images) /
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There have been 19 Big 12 championship games. The Oklahoma football team has been a participant in 12 of them, winning 10.

Iowa State, the Sooners’ opponent in the 2020 Big 12 Championship on Saturday, has never played for a conference championship in football in the Big 12 era. In fact, the Cyclones have never finished any higher than second in their division (the Big 12 was structured in two divisions from 1996 to 2010) and never any higher than fifth place overall as a member of the Big 12.

In the 25-year history of the Big 12, Oklahoma has won 13 football championships and is playing for a 14th and sixth straight on Saturday. The Sooners’ 13 conference titles are more than double the number the two next closest teams have combined (6).

Iowa State comes into the 2020 Big 12 Championship as the regular-season  conference champion with an 8-1 record and 8-2 overall. You have to go back 108 years, to 1912 and the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association, for the Cyclones only conference championship in football. All of this is very new for an Iowa State team whose previous highest Big 12 finish was second place in the North Division in and no higher than fifth place overall

Oklahoma’s supremacy in winning conference championships goes well beyond the Big 12, though. The Sooners won their first conference crown in 1915 as a member of the Southwest Conference. Since then, Oklahoma has brought home 48 more conference championship trophies, more than any other team in the country. That is three more than Nebraska, which was affiliated with the same conference as the Sooners from 1921-2010.

If the Sooners should defeat Iowa State on Saturday it would represent not just their sixth consecutive Big 12 crown and 14th overall, but also their 50th league crown overall. That equates to a conference championship approximately every two years through the school’s history.

Oh, and lest we forget, Oklahoma has won seven national championships in football, tied with USC for the third most in college football in the Associated Press poll era (since 1936).

If that doesn’t represent a championship tradition, nothing does

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