On Saturday, Oklahoma and Missouri will meet for the second time as members of the football kingdom known as the Southeastern Conference.
The two teams played last season at Missouri, won by the Tigers, 30-23, in a game that was as unentertaining as they come until the final quarter, when both teams combined for 34 of the 53 total points scored in the game. This year, the scene shifts to Norman, where the Sooners are 32-8-5 against Mizzou overall and 18-0 since 1966.
While OU is a relative newcomer to the SEC, Missouri has been a member of the conference since the 2012 season. The football series between these to longtime foes, however, goes back long before the founding of the SEC. The first football game between Oklahoma and Missouri goes back to 1902 in Columbia, Missouri, won by the home team Tigers 22-5. The game moved to Joplin, Missouri, the next year, with Mizzou prevailing again, 26-0.
While Missouri held the early edge in the all-time series, winning four of the first five games, Oklahoma has dominated the Tigers over the long haul with a 67-25-5 record, including 32 of the last 37.
The game on Saturday will feature a matchup of top-25 teams. Oklahoma is ranked No. 8 this week in the College Football Playoff Rankings, while Missouri enters the game at No. 22. This will be the 16th time in the series that both teams have been ranked, including five of the last nine. OU is 13-3 in the series in games in which both teams were ranked.
As you might suspect in a series this long-standing, there have been many memorable games in the nearly century-old series involving Oklahoma and Missouri. Here are the five most memorable:
1. November 15, 1975 -- #6 Oklahoma 28, #18 Missouri 27
On a 60-degree autumn afternoon in 1975, No. 6 Oklahoma faced No. 18 Missouri in front of over 67,000 fans at Faurot Field in Columbia, Missouri. The Sooners were coming off of a stunning 23-3 upset loss at home to Kansas the week before, snapping a 27-game winning streak over a three-season span. Oklahoma had full command of the game through the opening 30 minutes, leading 20-0 at halftime.
Missouri was far from finished, however. The Tigers pushed across a third-quarter touchdown to narrow Oklahoma's advantage to 20-7 and exploded for 20 unanswered fourth-quarter points to take a 27-20 lead with five minutes to go in the game. On Oklahoma's possession after Missouri had scored to go in front, Joe "Silver Shoes" Washington took a pitch from quarterback Steve Davis and took off around the right end, breaking free and outracing the Missouri defenders on a 75-yard touchdown run that made the score 27-26. Head coach Barry Switzer elected to go for a two-point conversion to win the game instead of kicking the extra point for a tie. It was Washington again taking it in for a successful two-point conversion that proved to be the winning margin.
Washington ended up with 124 rushing yards and a couple of touchdowns. It was one of the more memorable games in Washington's All-American career. The Sooners went on to finish with a season record of 11-1, defeating Michigan in the Orange Bowl to win Oklahoma's second consecutive national championship and fifth overall.
2. December 1, 2007 -- #9 Oklahoma 38, #1 Missouri 17
In 2007, No. 9 Oklahoma and Missouri met for the second time in the season in the Big 12 Championship Game. Missouri came into the conference title game fashioning an 11-1 record and the country's No. 1 ranking, having beaten No. 2 Kansas the week before. Quarterbacked by Chase Daniel, who went on to have a 13-year career in the NFL, Missouri's only regular-season loss that season had been to No. 6 Oklahoma and Sam Bradford, 41-31, earlier in the season in Norman.
A win in the Big 12 Championship would send Missouri to the BCS National Championship Game. The two teams battled back and forth in the opening half at the Alamodome in San Antonio, Texas, ending the first 30 minutes deadlocked at 14 apiece. Oklahoma took over the second half, however, scoring 14 unanswered points in the third quarter and adding 10 more in the fourth. Meanwhile, the Sooner defense tightened in the second half, holding Mizzou to just a fourth-quarter field goal in posting a 38-17 runaway from the nation's top-ranked team and knocking the Tigers out of the BCS National Championship.
3. October 23, 2010 -- #18 Missouri 36, #3 Oklahoma 27
No. 3 and undefeated Oklahoma traveled to play at No. 18 and also unbeaten Missouri in late October in 2010. The Sooners had won the last seven meetings between the two teams and 19 of the previous 20. But it was homecoming at Missouri, and this appeared from the beginning as a perfect trap game for OU.
The game was 7-7 after one quarter. Both teams added touchdowns in the second quarter, but Missouri kicked a field goal in the final seconds before halftime to take a 17-14 advantage into the locker room at the intermission.
The Sooners took their first lead in the game late in the third quarter on a 12-play, 69-yard drive that put the Sooners up 21-20. Missouri was far from done, however, exploding for 16 points in the fourth quarter to take a commanding 37-21 lead. The Sooners would get a final tally on a 77-yard kickoff return by Mossis Madu to the Missouri 15 late in the game that set up an Oklahoma touchdown run by Trey Millard two plays later. By that time, however, the upset was already signed, sealed and delivered.
Oklahoma's Landry Jones and Missouri's Blaine Gabbert combined to throw 92 passes in the game for 614 yards and four touchdowns (three by Jones).
Last season's game between OU and Mizzou, won by the Tigers 30-24, was the Sooners' first visit back to Columbia since that 2010 game.
4. November 14, 1987 -- #1 Oklahoma 17, Missouri 13
One year after the No. 3 Sooners had pummeled Missouri, handing the Tigers their worst loss in program history, 77-0, the schedule sent Missouri back to Norman, this time to face a No. 1Oklahoma team that was 10-0. As the game progressed, Missouri looked nothing like the team that had been literally and figuratively pounded into the ground on the same field the previous season, but you could also have said the same thing about Barry Switzer's Sooner team.
With just 10 minutes to go in the game, Oklahoma's lead was just 17-10, and Missouri appeared poised to pull off one of the biggest upsets of the college football season. The Tigers had multiple scoring opportunities down the stretch, but were only able to add a field goal. Nevertheless, it was a remarkable rebound from what had occurred the year before.
"Missouri played well, but our offense helped them, too." Switzer said afterward.
As was par for Oklahoma teams of that era, the Sooners turned the ball over four times on fumbles and were fortunate they didn't cost them dearly.
5. Nov. 11, 1961 -- Oklahoma 7, #10 Missouri 0
The year before, in 1960, the No. 2 Missouri Tigers had defeated unranked Oklahoma 41-19 on the Sooners' home turf to snap a 14-game Oklahoma winning streak versus the Tigers. In 1961, a No. 10 Missouri team looked to make it two in a row over the Sooners and in front of a much friendlier home crowd in Columbia, Missouri.
Missouri took a 5-1-1 record into its 1961 game against the Sooners. OU's record was almost the exact opposite at 1-5. Oklahoma scored the only points of the game in a defensive battle and went on to win 7-0 to record the upset. The Sooners finished the season with five straight wins to end the year at 5-5.