Stormin in Norman
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Oklahoma football countdown: Thirty-one days to season kickoff

By Chip Rouse

Apr 24, 2021; Norman, Oklahoma, USA; Oklahoma Sooners offense runs onto the field before the spring game at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
Apr 24, 2021; Norman, Oklahoma, USA; Oklahoma Sooners offense runs onto the field before the spring game at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports /
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The anticipation is building for the start of another Oklahoma football season, and later this week, with the opening of preseason training camp, we start making the turn around the curve and down the home stretch.

We’ve been getting into the act by counting down the days until the opening kickoff of the 2021 season with periodic articles highlighting interesting facts, figures and stories from Oklahoma seasons past and present.

T-minus 31 and counting…

Most everyone who closely follows college football is aware that Oklahoma owns the record for the longest consecutive-games winning streak. Over a period encompassing most of five seasons, of three and a half seasons, between 1953 and 1957, the Sooners won 47 games in a row.

The historic win streak started after a season-opening 28-21 loss to Notre Dame in 1953 and ironically ended in the eighth game of the 1957 season, when Notre Dame defeated the Sooners 7-0 in Norman in a game televised nationally by NBC.

Since then, nobody has really come close to breaking Oklahoma’s remarkable record of 47 straight wins. The team that has come closest in the modern era is Toledo, which won 35 consecutive games between 1969 and 1971.

The University of Washington had a 40-game streak in the early 1900s and Yale put together two win streaks of 37 games in the late 1800s.

While the Sooners 47-game win streak is widely known — and many believe could stand the test of time — what isn’t as well known is that Oklahoma also owns the fourth longest winning streak in modern college football history (since the end of World War II, or from 1946 forward).

From 1948 to 1950, Oklahoma won 31 straight games. That streak ended in the final game of the 1950 season, with the No. 2-ranked Sooners losing to No. 7 Kentucky and Paul “Bear” Bryant 13-7 in the Sugar Bowl. Despite the season-ending loss, Oklahoma was awarded its first college football national championship that season. In those years, the national championship was decided at the end of the regular season by the final national rankings published by the Associated Press writers and the United Press International Coaches Poll.

Bud Wilkinson was the head coach during both of OU’s two longest winning streaks.

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