The Oklahoma Sooners under Bob Stoops and then Lincoln Riley made the College Football Playoff almost as much as any team, with four appearances. Neither coach could break through to win the national championship. Oklahoma has seven national titles but hasn’t won it in the CFP era.
Now, two years into Brent Venables’ tenure, it’s been four years since the Sooners finished in the top four, and they’re heading to the SEC in 2024. Oklahoma should be a big beneficiary of the expanded 12-team playoff, but getting in has never been the issue.
In the 115 seasons of the Oklahoma football program, the Sooners have played in 56 bowl games with another on the way in either December of 2023 or January of 2024. Oklahoma has gone 31-24-1 in those bowl games and hasn’t missed a bowl game since 1998. That’s a streak of 24 years, that is about to be 25-straight.
The program lost its first bowl game appearance, all the way back in 1938, but proceeded to win six of the next seven spanning from 1946-58 which included three national titles under Bud Wilkinson.
Just making a bowl game isn’t good enough for Brent Venables, he needs to take Oklahoma back to the national championship. The Sooners have played plenty of bowl games, so let’s go through the history of them, starting with the BCS Championship.
Oklahoma bowl game history
BCS National Championship (0-1)
2009: Florida 24 Oklahoma 14
Sam Bradford won the 2008 Heisman trophy but lost the national championship game to the 2007 Heisman winner, Tim Tebow.