Oklahoma has been playing varsity college football for 131 years this coming season, but it was the Bud Wilkinson era beginning in the late 1940s that truly started the Sooners' ascendancy to the blue blood level of the sport.
Bob Stoops (190 wins) and Barry Switzer (157) both had more wins than Wilkinson's Oklahoma teams, but it was Wilkinson's teams of the 1950s that combined for 93 wins in 103 games and a decade-best winning percentage of .895 that produced the best decade in OU football history.
Which decade of OU football was the greatest?
During that record-setting decade of Oklahoma football, the Sooners won three national championships (1950, 1955 and 1956), 10 consecutive conference championships and produced a Heisman Trophy winner in Billy Vessels (1952), who played halfback, wide receiver and returned kicks for OU. Also during that decade, Oklahoma ran off a record-setting 47 consecutive wins between 1953 and 1957, a mark that still stands today and many believe may never be broken.
The 1950s proved to be the first of several more decades of Oklahoma football supremacy under legendary coaches Switzer and Stoops. In the six decades that followed the 1950s, the Sooners ended the 10 years among the top four teams in total wins in four of the six, and was No. 2 in that category twice (1970-79 and 2000-09).
Not every decade of Sooner football since the 1950s, however, has lived up to typical Oklahoma standards. The two least satisfactory decades in the last 75 years were in the 1960s and1990s.
Gary Gibbs, Howard Schnellenberger and John Blake were at the helm for Oklahoma in the 1990s before Bob Stoops took over in 1999. From 1990-99, Schnellenberger and Blake were a combined 17-27 over four seasons and Oklahoma was 61-51 (.543), 49th among teams at the NCAA Division I level.
OU also went through a period of coaching transition in the 1960s. It was the tail end of the Wilkinson era (1963 was his final season), and the Sooners would have three other head coaches (Gomer Jones, Jim Mackenzie and Chuck Fairbanks) before the decade ended. Oklahoma was tied for 23rd in the country in the decade of the '60s with 62 wins and 40 losses and a winning percentage of .606.
Oklahoma's 706 wins since 1946, or the end of World War II, are the most of any team in college football. Over that period, the Sooners have won all seven of their national championships and 44 of their nation-best 50 conference championships.
In the seven decades beginning with the 1950s, Oklahoma has won more than 90 games in a decade, an average of at least nine wins per season, five times with a winning percentage of .820 or better in four of the seven decades.
For those who might be interested, Oklahoma is 42-21 through the first five seasons of the 2020s. Two of those (2022 and 2024), however, were losing seasons in three seasons under head coach Brent Venables. To put that into context, Oklahoma has only had seven losing seasons total since 1950.
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