Oklahoma football: OU-Nebraska game features multiple reunions

It won’t be one of the marquee games of the college football season, as it was for many years in the past, but when the Oklahoma football team hosts the Nebraska Cornhuskers on Saturday, it will mark more than the renewal of one of the college game’s most historic rivalries.

Most of the players who will participate on both sides in Saturday’s contest between these two longtime conference rivals weren’t even out of elementary school the last time Oklahoma and Nebraska met on the football field. Nor, obviously, were any of them alive 50 years ago when No. 1 Nebraska and No. 2 Oklahoma did battle in what at the time was widely promoted as the “Game of the Century.”

The Oklahoma-Nebraska rivalry, which spans 109 years — 71 of them consecutively from 1927 to 1997 — has been dormant for 11 years. The two teams played for the Big 12 championship in 2010, and the following year, Nebraska left the Big 12 to join the Big Ten.

What these two historic football powerhouses accomplished in the 90 seasons they were members of the same conference is the absolute embodiment of the word “domination.”

Oklahoma’s 919 all-time victories ranks sixth among FBS programs, and Nebraska is right behind with 907 all-time wins. The two schools also rank No. 1 and No. 2 nationally in conference championships: Oklahoma with 50 and Nebraska with 46. OU or Nebraska with won outright or shared 44 of the 48 Big Eight football titles.

Oklahoma owns a seven-game advantage in the all-time series (45-38-3), but since 1969, only two games separate the two teams (20-18 in favor of the Sooners).

The 2021 version of Oklahoma versus Nebraska won’t come anywhere close to all the hype and drama afforded the “Game of the Century,” but the tradition and memory of that epic gridiron battle will be present all over Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on Saturday. OU Memorial Stadium was, of course, the site of the 1971 game, and some of the participants in that game will be in attendance and honored during the game on Saturday.

And that won’t be the only player reunion taking place on Saturday. Oklahoma senior linebacker Caleb Kelly and Nebraska junior quarterback Adrian Martinez were high school teammates at West Clovis High School in Fresno, California.

Kelly has another Nebraska tie, as well. His longtime girlfriend, Adriana Maldonado, is a junior on the Nebraska women’s soccer team.

The two high school teammates will be on opposites sides of the line of scrimmage on Saturday. Kelly, the last player from the Bob Stoops era, returned for his sixth season at Oklahoma after missing all but four games the last two seasons because of knee injuries. He and his Sooner defensive teammates will have their hands full with Martinez, who is a one-man wrecking crew on offense for the Cornhuskers.

Martinez has accounted for 1,084 yards of offense (728 passing and 256 rushing) for Nebraska through the first three games. That is almost 70 percent of the Huskers total offense so far this season. To illustrate how dangerous the dual-threat Martinez is, Mitch Sherman, a staff writer for The Athletic, points out that Nebraska is one of three programs nationally this season with two runs of 70 yards or longer and one of 11 schools with two pass plays of at least 60 yards. No other team, though, has done both.

Here’s the kicker: Martinez has been involved in all four of those big plays for Nebraska.

Containing the highly mobile Martinez will be Job #1 for Alex Grinch’s Oklahoma defense on Saturday. How well they do in that mission won’t necessarily determine the outcome of the game, but will clearly have an impact on the winning margin and how competitive the 87th renewal of this rivalry is.

Oklahoma and Nebraska will also meet again next season in Lincoln, and in the 2029 and ’30 seasons.