OU vs. Texas: Primer on one of college football’s classic rivalries

There are a multitude of college football rivalries — a number of which are well over a century old — but few with as much pageantry, tradition and involving teams with high national rankings and reputations as the Oklahoma football rivalry with the University of Texas.

The 117th renewal of that classic rivalry kicks off on Saturday with the No. 6 Sooners taking on their archrival, the No. 15 Texas Longhorns at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.

There are several things that make the OU-Texas game every fall so special and different from other football rivalries.

For one thing, it is played on a neutral field every season, although very early in the series history it was played at the two campus sites. The home-and-home games didn’t work out all that well for the Sooners, who were 3-9-1 against the Longhorns when the game was played either in Austin or Norman.

Since 1932, the game has been held at the Cotton Bowl stadium in Dallas, which stages the Texas State Fair in the first two weeks of October. That fact, in itself, makes this rivalry game very different from all the others.

Another highly unique feature of this game is the crowd configuration and colors. Half of the stadium, or about 45,000 fans seated from the 50-yard line on one side of the stadium to the 50-yard line on the other features fans decked out in the crimson Oklahoma colors. The other half of the stadium is saturated in burnt orange, the Texas school color.

In addition to the 85,000 to 90,000 fans that are crammed into the Cotton Bowl, it is not at all unusual to have upward of a quarter-million people attending the Texas State Fair on the day of the OU-Texas game.

This rivalry has been promoted in several ways over the years. It is currently billed as the Red River Shootout, but it has also been called the Red River Rivalry as well as the Red River Shootout.

"“(This is) a week we always look forward to every single year,” Sooner head coach Lincoln Riley said in opening his weekly press conference on Tuesday, “We’re excited that it’s here. We’re excited that we get to get back to the Cotton Bowl with a more normal atmosphere.“We’ve had a lot of fun, a lot of great games over the years, but this is one I don’t ever take for granted because you realize how special it is each and every year.”"

Oklahoma has won eight of the last 11 regular-season battles between these two longtime rivals, including a 53-45 four-overtime thriller a year ago.

Texas has a 62-49-5 overall advantage over the Sooners in this series, but since 1971, it has been Oklahoma with the upper hand. The Sooners are 27-20-3 against the Longhorns since the ’71 season.

The winning team is awarded the Golden Hat, a gold cowboy hat mounted on a wooden block. The trophy is presented after the game, and the players on the winning team are often seen parading around the field wearing the Golden Hat and posing for postgame images.