Oklahoma football: Five best Sooner coaches who never won a national title

Dewey Luster

Dewey Luster was born and raised in Oklahoma, played for the Sooners under legendary head coach Bennie Owen from 1917 to 1920 and later became head coach of Oklahoma football.

Luster was captain and quarterback of Oklahoma’s undefeated (6-0-1) 1920 football team.

The 11th head coach in Sooner football history got his start in coaching in high school, three times serving as head coach at Norman High School (in 1924, again from 1926-28 and once more from 1933-36). In between time, Luster served one season, in 1925, as head coach at Southwestern State Teachers College (now Southwestern Oklahoma State College) and one year as an assistant at Colorado Mines.

In 1929, he joined Adrian Lindsey’s coaching staff at OU as an assistant coaching the linemen. When Lindsey was let go following the 1931 season, Luster left the program for five seasons before returning to OU as an assistant in 1937 in Tom Stidham’s first season as head coach.

In 1941, at 42 years old, Luster succeeded Stidham as head coach at Oklahoma. He served in five seasons in that role, compiling a record of 27-28-3. The Sooners had just one losing season under Luster’s leadership (3-5-2 in 1942), but his teams never finished lower than second in the Bix Six Conference standings.

Luster’s head-coaching tenure at OU came at a very difficult and complicated time. During the six months that followed the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941, it was reported that nearly 60 OU student athletes had enlisted on one of the branches of the U.S. armed forces and more continued to enlist as the war years progressed.

In 1945, Oklahoma lost three of its final four games, capped off by a 47-0 shellacking in the Sooners season finale. Luster resigned almost immediately following the loss to Oklahoma State. The official reason given for his resignation was “poor health.”