As the sixth winningest team in college football history, Oklahoma certainly has had its share of big home games at what is now Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.
And on Friday, the Sooners may have their biggest home game in 131 seasons of Oklahoma football when they host No. 9 Alabama in the opening round of the 2025 College Football Playoff.
For the second time since the playoff format was expanded to 12 teams in 2024, the opening round is being played on campus sites at the home of the higher-ranked team. Oklahoma finished No. 8 in the final College Football Playoff Rankings and thus earned home-field advantage over the Crimson Tide.
It will be the second time in as many seasons that Alabama has played at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium -- the place affectionately known as the "Palace on the Prairie" -- and the third time overall. The Sooners shocked the then-No. 7-Crimson Tide 24-3 a year ago and were victorious, 37-27 in 2002 in Alabama's first-ever trip to Norman.
This will be the first time that a postseason game, and clearly a postseason game of this magnitude, has been played in Norman. For that reason alone, Friday's playoff matchup has to be considered one of the biggest, if not the biggest, football game ever played at OU.
5 biggest Oklahoma home games in the past 50-plus years
Honorable Mention -- Nov. 22, 2008: No. 5 Oklahoma vs. No. 2 Texas Tech
Texas Tech came to Norman on Nov. 22, 2008, undefeated at 9-0 and ranked No. 2 in the country. Two weeks before, the Red Raiders had defeated previously top-ranked Texas to record one of the greatest wins in Texas Tech program history. Oklahoma had lost to Texas earlier in the season, and a win by the 5th-ranked Sooners would throw the Big 12 South Division into a three-way tie at the top.
Sam Bradford, who would win the Heisman Trophy that season, threw for 331 yards and four touchdowns, and led an OU offense that rolled up 625 yards and 65 points in a 65-21 demolition of the previously unbeaten Red Raiders. Oklahoma won the tiebreaker as the highest-ranked team and went on to beat Missouri for the Big 12 championship, which earned the Sooners a spot against eventual national champion Florida in the BCS National Championship.
5 (T) -- Nov. 22, 1975: No. 7 Oklahoma vs. No. 2 Nebraska
No. 2 Nebraska and No. 7 Oklahoma played at OU on the final weekend of the 1975 regular season. The Cornhuskers were 10-0 coming into that game and featured one of the best passing quarterbacks in the country in Vince Ferragamo.
The winner of this game would win the Big Eight championship and represent the conference in the Orange Bowl. The Sooners' wishbone offense was lethal enough, but it was the OU defense that took over this game, holding the high-octane Nebraska offense to 245 total yards, nearly 200 below its season average, and forcing four Cornhusker turnovers. Oklahoma defeated Nebraska 35-10, then defeated Michigan in the Orange Bowl to finish 11-1 and win the national championship.
5(T) -- Nov. 23, 1985, No. 5 Oklahoma vs. No. 2 Nebraska
Nebraska came to Oklahoma ranked No. 2 in the nation and with college football's highest-scoring offense, averaging 39.1 points a game, and best rushing offense at nearly 400 yards per game. OU's offense wasn't too bad either, and on this day, freshman quarterback Jamelle Holieway, starting his fifth game in place of injured Troy Aikman, led a Sooner rushing attack that outgained the Cornhuskers 423-161 and resulted in a 27-7 win.
Oklahoma finished 11-1 that season -- its lone loss 27-14 to Miami early in the season when Aikman suffered a broken ankle -- and defeated No. 1 Penn State to win its third national title under head coach Barry Switzer and sixth overall.
3 -- Nov. 23, 2024, No. 7 Alabama vs. Oklahoma
This game is still relatively fresh in the minds of Sooner fans, and especially so for Alabama fans, who saw their team get completely shut down on offense, totaling just 234 yards, and uncharacteristically turn the ball over three times as the 5-5 Sooners posted a 24-3 upset. It was easily the biggest win of Oklahoma's season and virtually eliminated the Crimson Tide from playoff consideration.
2 -- October 28, 2000, No. 1 Nebraska vs. No. 3 Oklahoma
The 2000 Oklahoma team, in its second season under head coach Bob Stoops, started out the season at No. 19 in the Associated Press Top 25. The Sooners slowly advanced upward in the national rankings until by the seventh game they had worked their way up to the No. 3 spot.
On Oct. 28, OU hosted top-ranked Nebraska, three weeks after the Sooners had beaten No. 11 Texas and No. 2 Kansas State on successive weekends. The Nebraska game started out slowly for Oklahoma, with the Cornhuskers scoring twice in the first quarter to take a 14-0 lead. At that point, it appeared that Nebraska might win this game in a runaway. The Sooner offense, however, came to life in the second quarter, exploding for 24 unanswered points, including a 32-yard interception by Derrick Strait that was returned for a touchdown.
All 14 of Nebraska's points came in the first eight minutes of the game. The OU defense held the Huskers scoreless for the final 51 minutes, 49 seconds of the game. The Sooners scored a third-quarter touchdown to go up 31-14, but the game was essentially over at halftime. With the win, Oklahoma took over the top spot in the national rankings for the first time since the 1987 season. The 2000 season, of course, was the year the Sooners went 13-0 and defeated Florida State 13-2 in the BCS National Championship Game to claim the school's seventh and most recent national title.
1 -- Nov. 25, 1971, No. 1 Nebraska vs. No. 2 Oklahoma
The 1971 college football season will always be remembered as the year Nebraska, Oklahoma and Colorado, all out of the Big Eight, finished 1, 2 and 3, respectively, in the national rankings. But it was also the season that No. 2 Oklahoma hosted No. 1 Nebraska in what was widely billed as the "Game of the Century."
The game itself was everything it was built up to be. The two teams battled back and forth in front of a sold-out Memorial Stadium crowd of 61,186, over 20,000 less than what will be on hand on Friday for the 2025 CFP game against Alabama, and some 55 million who watched the game on Thanksgiving Day on national TV.
Nebraska set the tone early in the game on a 72-yard punt return by Nebraska's Johnny Rogers to put the Cornhuskers up 7-0 in the first quarter. Oklahoma was stopped short of the end zone on an 85-yard drive later in the opening quarter, and Nebraska scored a second touchdown early in the second quarter to extend the Huskers' advantage to 14-3. Quarterback Jack Mildren led two long Oklahoma scoring drives later in the second quarter, and the Sooners took a 17-14 lead into the locker room at halftime.
Nebraska quarterback Jerry Tagge engineered a couple of scoring drives in the third quarter as the Huskers' regained a two-score advantage at 28-17. Mildren ran in a three-yard touchdown with under a minute to go in the quarter to send the game to the final quarter with Nebraska holding on to a narrow 28-24 margin.
Midway through the fourth quarter, OU's Jon Harrison caught a 16-yard touchdown pass from Mildren, his second of the day, to put the Sooners ahead 31-28. After Oklahoma's ensuing kickoff, Nebraska took possession on its own 26-yard line. Over the next seven minutes, Tagge led the Cornhusker offense on a hard-nosed 74-yard scoring drive that was capped off by a two-yard TD run by All-America running back Jeff Kinney with 28 seconds remaining in the game. The Nebraska defense held the Sooners' revered rushing attack to a season-low 297 yards. Oklahoma also committed three turnovers, which didn't help the Sooners' cause.
Even though this celebrated game was over a half-century ago, many people still consider it the greatest college football game ever played.