How do Oklahoma football coaches rank among all-time winningest?

Oklahoma football is about to enter its 129th season, which dates back to 1895. The Sooners have 934 wins over that time, sixth most in college football history. Their .725 all-time winning percentage is also sixth best in the sport.

There are several ways to measure success as a college football head coach. Total wins is obviously one measure, but wins in and of themselves do not necessarily equate to a high winning percentage because they don’t take into account the number of games lost. National championships and conference championships is certainly another means of evaluating coaching success.

Four head coaches in Oklahoma football history — Bennie Owen, Bud Wilkinson, Barry Switzer and Bob Stoops — won more than 100 games, and OU is the only school that can make that claim. Two of the four can lay claim to being the winningest head coach in Sooner football history, again, based on what your definition of “winningest” is.

Stoops (1999-2016) is the winningest head coach in OU football history based on total wins. Stoops’ Sooner teams won 191 games in 16 seasons. That, incidentally, ranks tied for 21st nationally all-time, according to sports-reference.com.

If you are talking about the winningest Sooner head football coach based purely on win percentage (and in a minimum of 100 games), it is Switzer, whose .837 winning percentage (157-29-4) in 16 seasons (1973-88) at OU ranks No. 5 nationally. Only Knute Rockne (.881), Frank Leahy (.864), Urban Meyer and George Washington Woodruff rank higher than Switzer in all-time win percentage in college football, and Rockne and Switzer are the only two to do so at one school (Notre Dame and Oklahoma).

Many consider Wilkinson the greatest head coach in Oklahoma’s rich and storied football history, but Wilkinson, who coached at OU from 1947 to 1963, ranks second in Sooner history in all-time winning percentage (.826) and third in all-time wins (145). On a national basis, Wilkinson ranks 11th all-time in win percentage but tied for 73rd in total wins.

Owen was the first great head coach at OU and not just in football. He also coached the Oklahoma basketball and baseball teams, one of the earliest of the dual-sport head coaches. Owen coached the football team for 22 seasons, the longest of any Sooner head coach, and compiled 122 wins and a .677 win percentage. Those two figures rank Owen tied for 113th nationally and tied for 97th, respectively, on the national level.