The musical chairs game, otherwise known as conference realignment, is creating further division between the haves and the have-nots in college football and changing many of the things that fans of all allegiances, including Oklahoma football fans, once held near and dear.
There are no geographical boundaries anymore. The Big Ten, largely made up of teams in the upper Midwest, has brought in teams from the East Coast and soon will add the two biggest schools in the Los Angeles market. The Big 12 previously added a team from West Virginia and next season will welcome new members from Utah (BYU) and Florida (UCF).
The Atlantic Coast Conference has a team from Kentucky (Louisville) and one from upstate New York (Syracuse).
Things are already dysfunctional about conference realignment and are about to become even more so. What for the last few years we have thought of as the Power Five conferences in short order will be redefined and separated out, leaving just the Power Two — the Big Ten, which recently announced the biggest media rights agreement in the history of college athletics, and the SEC, long considered the strongest football conference in the country.
One big casualty of conference realignment is the disruption, or worse the elimination, of some long-established conference rivalries. Nowhere is this issue more apparent than what has already occurred and will again shortly in the Oklahoma football program.
Oklahoma and Nebraska first started playing each other in 1912. The two schools weren’t even members of the same conference at that time. In 1921, the Sooners and Cornhuskers met for the first time as members of the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Association (which later evolved into the Big Six, Big Seven, et. al). Between 1921 and 2010, the two teams played virtually every season until 2010, when the met for the final time for an 11-year period in the Big 12 Championship.
The Sooners won that 2010 game 23-20, and the next season the Cornhuskers were off to the Big Ten. OU and the Huskers renewed the Big Red rivalry series in 2021 after an 11-year hiatus, and the two teams will play again on Sept. 17 this season in Lincoln. Honestly, though, it isn’t quite the same as it was back in the day.
The OU-Nebraska rivalry — the same two teams who played in the “Game of the Century” in 1971 as the Nos. 1 and 2 teams in the country — are scheduled to play again in 2029 and 2030, but not before that. For all intents and purposes, this one-time classic rivalry died when Nebraska left the Big 12 for the Big Ten. In the 87 contests played thus far in the series, Oklahoma owns a 46-38-3 record.
With Oklahoma and Texas leaving for the SEC sometime over the next three seasons, the annual rivalry with the Sooners biggest rival will continue. That’s good news, but the long in-state rivalry with Oklahoma State will soon be in jeopardy. The Bedlam Series between Oklahoma and Oklahoma State, which is almost as old as the Sooners’ rivalry with Texas, may sadly come to an end for the foreseeable future when Oklahoma moves to the SEC.
OU and Oklahoma State have played virtually every season since 1974, but as rivalries go, this hasn’t been much of one, with the Sooners dominating the 116 games in the series with a 90-19-7 record.
“Bedlam’s not going to be Bedlam after they (OU) leave the conference,” Oklahoma State head coach Mike Gundy said during Big 12 Media Days in July. “I don’t make that decision. I’m just telling you that in my opinion, I think it’s history.”
While Nebraska always considered Oklahoma a rival, and the two schools had some truly memorable games in the now 87-game series, that was more of a conference rivalry between the two best teams for the vast majority of seasons they were conference foes. The Sooners and Huskers have combined for 96 conference championships (50 for Oklahoma and 46 for Nebraska), which ranks one and two in college football history.
Despite the Nebraska rivalry and the natural in-state rivalry with Oklahoma State, which some would argue is hardly a rivalry because of the Sooners’ total dominance, Oklahoma will always consider Texas to be its only genuine rivalry. And the Red River Showdown will continue to be one of the most important, if not the most important, games on the Oklahoma schedule even when the two teams officially make the move to the SEC.