Oklahoma football: Pigskin series with Kansas one of Sooners’ longest

The Oklahoma football series with the Kansas Jayhawks is the third longest in the 127 years of Sooner football.

The Jayhawks are also the team that Oklahoma has the highest winning percentage against of all former and current Big 12 and Big Eight teams. The Sooners have an all-time record of 78-27-6 (.703) against Kansas in football.

Moreover, Oklahoma has won the last 16 games against Kansas and scored at least 54 points in the last 12 meetings.

Despite the Sooners’ overall dominance over the Jayhawks, Kansas owns a couple of the biggest upsets against a highly ranked Oklahoma team.

In 1964, the year after Bud Wilkinson stepped down after 17 seasons as head coach, Oklahoma and Kansas played at Kansas in the fourth game of the season. The Sooners came into the game with a 1-2 record having lost to No. 2-ranked USC and Texas in the annual Red River Rivalry game in consecutive weeks. The game began with NFL Hall of Famer Gayle Sayers running back the opening kickoff 93 yards for a touchdown and an early 7-0 Kansas lead.

The Sooners took a 15-7 lead into the fourth quarter, having dominated the game to that point after Sayers’ opening heroics. Late in the contest, Oklahoma elected to punt instead of going for it on fourth-and-one from its own 44-yard line. Sayers fielded the punt for the Jayhawks and went out of bounds on the KU eight-yard line. Kansas then engineered a scoring drive of 92 yards, with QB Bobby Skahan running the ball in for a touchdown as time expired on the game clock, making it 14-13.

With time about to expire, Kansas head coach Jack Mitchell chose to go for a two-point conversion and the win rather tie the game by kicking the extra point. The conversion try was successful and Kansas posted a 15-14 victory over the Sooners by scoring on the both the first and last play of the game. That was the Jayhawks first win over Oklahoma since 1946.

Two other times in the Barry Switzer coaching era, an unranked Kansas team upset an Oklahoma team that was ranked No. 2 in the Associated Press rankings. In 1975, Kansas beat the Sooners in Norman on their home field, 28-3. The Sooners committed eight turnovers in the second half alone that contributed to KU’s upset win.

OU had won 28 consecutive games before that 1984 loss to the Jayhawks. That was the Sooners’ only loss that season and they went on to finish 11-1 and capture their second straight national championship.

In 1984, Oklahoma played at Kansas and came in ranked No. 2 in the country. The Jayhawks had not beaten the Sooners since the 1975 game. Kansas held the explosive Oklahoma wishbone offense to a meager 2.4 yards per play and pulled away in the second half for a 28-11 victory. That was the only regular-season loss by OU that season. The Sooners finished the season at 9-2-1. The next season, Oklahoma won its sixth national championship and third under Switzer.

Interestingly, Kansas won the first eight games in this series by the combined score of 136-9.

Since then, the longest Kansas winning streak over Oklahoma has been three games. Meanwhile, the Sooners have had win streaks of eight, 10, 12 and 16 consecutive games against the Jayhawks. Between 1965 and 1991, Oklahoma won 25 of 27 games between the two schools.

The game this Saturday at Kansas is the 112th game in the series. The Sooners 16-game winning streak against Kansas is OU’s longest active win streak against an opponent.