Oklahoma has won seven national championships in college football in the Associated Press Poll era. That is tied with Ohio State and USC for the third-most in the past 90 seasons, dating back to the first season of the AP Top 25 rankings in college football.
Only Alabama (14) and Notre Dame (8) have more national titles in college football, as officially recognized by the final AP Top 25 poll every season since 1936. Moreover, the Sooners have been in position to add to their natty number several times through the years but haven't been able to finish the job.
It's been 25 years, or a quarter century, since Oklahoma last put a national championship trophy on display in the trophy case at the Switzer Center, marking the largest span of time between national titles since the Sooners claimed their first in 1950.
None of the players on the current Oklahoma roster were alive the last time the Sooner football program won a national championship. That's how long it's been. Of course, there are over 100 teams at the FBS level of college football that would love to have the opportunity to play for even one national championship, but let's call it like it is. At Oklahoma, the football standard is to seriously compete for national championships, with the annual goal of being the last team standing with the championship trophy in hand.
Sooners have at least been serious national title contenders in 9 of the last 26 seasons
While it may be easy to acknowledge that the Sooners have fallen short of that lofty standard for going on 26 years since their last national championship celebration, the reality is the Sooners have been at the doorstep, if not well in the hunt, in at least nine of those seasons, including the last one.
During the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) era (1998-2013), the national championship was decided between the two highest-ranked teams based on a formula that combined human poll results and computer rankings at the end of the regular season and after the conference championship games had been played.
Oklahoma was fortunate to be one of those two surviving teams four different times in the 16 seasons of the BCS era, including the 2000 season, when Oklahoma defeated Florida State, the only other team to appear in as many as four BCS National Championship games, to complete its first 13-win undefeated season and capture the top team prize in college football.
The Sooners missed out on the national championship game in 2001 and 2002 but returned in 2003 to face LSU and again in 2004 to go against USC. OU lost by a touchdown to LSU, 21-14, but suffered an embarrassing 55-19 beatdown by USC in a battle between two Heisman-winning quarterbacks, Jason White (the 2003 winner) of Oklahoma and Matt Leinart (2004) of USC.
Oklahoma, led by Heisman-winning quarterback Sam Bradford, also appeared in the 2008 BCS National Championship game, taking on 2007 Heisman-winner Tim Tebow and the Florida Gators. For the third straight time, the Sooners failed to cash in on a golden national championship opportunity -- and for a third time in a six-year span -- losing 24-14 to the Gators, who captured their third and most recent national title.
Read more: Ranking the 5 worst Oklahoma football losses of the past 50 years
Bob Stoops was head coach for all four of Oklahoma's BCS National Championship Game appearances and also led the Sooners to a College Football Playoff appearance in 2015, the second year under that national championship format.
In 2014, following considerable criticism of the BCS format for determining the national champion, the championship participants were expanded to four teams as part of a College Football Playoff. That same process remains in effect today, although the number of teams is now up to a dozen and about to grow larger.
The Sooners became a regular qualifier in the initial years of the four-team playoff to determine the national champion, appearing as one of the four final contenders in four of the first six seasons (2015, 2017, 2018 and 2019). Oklahoma was the No. 2 seed in the 2017 College Football Playoff and the closest it has come to playing for the national championship in the playoff era. Despite holding a 14-point halftime advantage against No, 3 Georgia, the Sooners lost 55-48 in overtime.
OU was the No. 4 seed on three other CFP appearances and the No. 8 seed last season, when the Sooners hosted No. 9 Alabama in the opening round of the playoff. Unfortunately, Oklahoma has failed to make it past the first game in all five of its playoff appearances, leaving the proud OU football program with a shameful 1-8 record in its nine postseason championship format appearances this century. The one win was in the 2000 national championship game.
Under legendary head coach Bud Wilkinson, Oklahoma won its first national championship in 1950 and added on two more over the next six seasons, including back-to-back in 1955 and '56.
Nineteen years passed before Barry Switzer's 1974 and 1975 Sooner teams turned the trick again in consecutive seasons. Switzer joined Wilkinson, producing a third Oklahoma national championship team 10 years later in 1985. That gave OU a total of six national titles in football over a period of 36 years, or an average of one every six years.
Stoops' Oklahoma teams won more games than any head coach in OU football history but had just one national championship team. National championships are hard to come by in any sport. Plenty of things have to go right in every game all season long, and with a lot of luck -- or in Oklahoma's case, Sooner Magic -- sprinkled in.
If you're not one of the final two teams vying for the chance every season to be crowned national champion, and you are a school with a rich championship history like Oklahoma, you at least want to be one of the select few teams to make the final cut of championship contenders. On that score, the Sooners have done a better job than all but a handful of college teams over the past 25 years, despite staking claim to just one national title during that stretch.
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