Oklahoma making 58th bowl appearance, 4th most all-time

Oklahoma is making its 58th postseason bowl appearance this season. That ranks fourth all-time in college football history.

Only Alabama (78), Georgia (63) and Texas (60) -- interestingly all teams from the SEC Conference -- have been to more bowl games than the Oklahoma Sooners, which as everyone knows is now also a member of the SEC.

Perhaps even more noteworthy is the Sooners' active streak of appearing in a bowl game for the 26th consecutive season. Only Georgia, which will make its 28th consecutive postseason appearance this season, has a longer active streak.

For a while in the 2024 season, it appeared that Oklahoma might not reach the requisite six wins to become bowl eligible. The Sooners began the season 4-1, but did not pick up that elusive sixth win until the next-to-last game of the regular season, stunning Alabama 24-3 in the final home game of the year.

Oklahoma owns a 31-26 all-time bowl record. The Sooners made their first postseason bowl appearance in 1939. OU, coached by Tom Stidham, took a perfect 10-0 record into an Orange Bowl matchup with No. 2 Tennessee. The Volunteers were also undefeated through 10 games and stayed that way, earning win No. 11 with a 17-0 shutout over the No. 4 Sooners.

The Sooners have been to 16 different locations in their 57 bowl games, and this season will mark the 17th as OU makes the relatively short trip down I-35 to Fort Worth to take on Navy in the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl. The game will be played at a venue familiar to OU, however: Amon G. Carter Stadium at TCU. Oklahoma played at the reconstructed TCU facility six times as a member of the Big 12, going 4-2.

OU holds the distinction of having played multiple times in all of the major bowls, including 21 appearances in the Orange Bowl (for many years, the Big 12 and all of its previous structures had an agreement with the Orange Bowl). The Sooners have also appeared twice in the Rose Bowl, eight times in the Sugar Bowl, five times in the Fiesta Bowl, three times in the Cotton Bowl and one appearance in the Peach Bowl.

In the 16 seasons the Bowl Championship Series was in place in determine the two teams that would play for the national championship (1998-2013), Oklahoma appeared in four BCS National Championship games (2000, 2003, 2004 and 2008), winning the national championship in the 2000 season. Including the New Year's Six bowls, OU competed in nine BCS bowls

The BCS format was replaced by the College Football Playoff beginning in the 2014 season, which expanded the format of teams competing for the national title from two to four. The Sooners have appeared in four College Football Playoffs, including three straight seasons from 2017-19.

Oklahoma's largest margin of victory in a bowl game was in the 1951 Sugar Bowl (1950 season), when Bud Wilkinson's No. 2 Sooners rolled all over No. 9 LSU to the tune of 35-0. Four other times Oklahoma has won by 34 points. OU's worst bowl loss was the 55-19 beatdown by USC in the 2005 BCS National Championship played in the Orange Bowl (2004 season).

Arguably Oklahoma's most embarrassing loss in a bowl game environment occurred in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl (2006 season). The No. 7 Sooners came back from a 28-10 deficit in the second half against mid-major giant and No. 9 Boise State, scoring 18 points in the fourth quarter to briefly take the lead.

Faced with 4th-and-18 at the 50-yard line and OU leading 35-28 with just seven seconds to go, Boise State perfectly executed an old-school hook-and-ladder play that ended in a 50-yard touchdown to tie the game at 35 and send it to overtime.

The Sooners scored first in overtime with Adrian Peterson going 25 yards on OU's first play of the extra session to go up 42-35. Boise State, again forced with a fourth down at the the Sooner 6-yard line in its first overtime possession, pulled off another trick play to score a touchdown and was just an extra point away from sending the game to a second overtime. That's when Broncos coach Chris Peterson elected to go for two points and the win instead of kicking the extra point.

Peterson dialed up a Statue of Liberty play, again out of the old-school trick bag, and quarterback Jeff Zabransky executed the play to perfection with running back Ian Johnson taking the handoff untouched around the right side of the formation and into the end zone to complete the two-point conversion and a shocking 43-42 Boise State victory.

That 2007 BCS Fiesta Bowl game may go down in history as one of the most talked about and difficult to accept losses in 126 years of Oklahoma football.