Days of Reign

The scoreboard glowed dumbly that gray afternoon, the clock melted down to zeros, no question about the outcome. Oklahoma had lost, 7-0, to Notre Dame, yet the Sooners could not believe it.

“The players didn’t leave the field,” recalls Joe Rector, a tight end on the team. “I just got down on my knees and stayed there for what felt like an hour.”

Fans in Oklahoma Memorial Stadium were dumbstruck, planted in their seats. “I’m talking about 62,000 people,” says Bob Burris, a former player in the stands that day. “Nobody moved.”

The date was Nov. 16, 1957, and the Sooners had just lost a football game for the first time in four years.

Think about it. A president took office, served his term and was reelected. A war ended in Korea and another began in Vietnam. Along the way, dozens of Saturday afternoons came and went, each bringing a chance for the Sooners to slip against a ranked opponent or take an underdog too lightly.

Forty-seven games and not one letdown. Not a single loss.

On the glum day it ended, Oklahoma figured to trample an outmanned Irish team and plow ahead toward a third consecutive national championship. “We didn’t even think about losing,” Rector says.

Funny thing is, they did not think much about winning either. The streak was hardly ever mentioned. No one realized it was extraordinary or felt undue pressure to keep it alive.

“It sounds egotistical, but we expected to win every game,” says Jimmy Harris, the quarterback for much of the streak. “Hell, we thought that was the way it was supposed to be.”

*

The Games They Won

The record book shows that college football’s longest winning streak belongs to Mount Union -- 54 games -- but that was in Division III against the likes of Rowan, Muskingum and Otterbein.

No big-time school has approached Oklahoma’s feat. Miami, at 34 victories, has a chance but would have to defeat Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl, go unbeaten next season and win another bowl game. Until that happens, the Sooners rank with Joe DiMaggio hitting safely in 56 games and the Boston Celtics winning eight consecutive NBA championships in the 1960s.

“Phenomenal,” says Paul Hornung, the Hall of Fame halfback whose 1956 Notre Dame team was a victim in the procession. “They played some tough teams and just won everything in sight.”

The dynasty started unexpectedly. Though the Sooners had established themselves as a powerhouse with a national championship a few years earlier, the fall of 1953 found them rebuilding after the departure of Heisman Trophy winner Billy Vessels.

The season began with a loss to Notre Dame and a tie at Pittsburgh. Then their legendary coach, Bud Wilkinson, shook things up by switching his players from one position to another, and the team responded with a 19-14 victory over Texas.

The date was Oct. 10. The streak had begun.

Oklahoma wasn’t big along the line of scrimmage but, as Hornung recalls, “the one ingredient they always had was speed. They ran that split-T formation and they always had a halfback who was quick.”

Just as important, they had Wilkinson.

His hair was beginning to gray in those days and he always wore a suit, always stood straight. He was articulate but selective with his words.

“He was the kind of person who never raised his voice, never cursed,” Harris says. “He’d tell you what to do and if you screwed it up, he’d tell you again. If you screwed up a third time, you didn’t get another chance. He’d stick you at the end of the bench.”

Practices were short and intricately structured, no detail unattended. “It’s like when you’re practicing to kick an extra point, he had it down to a science that the guy on the end of the line would stick his elbow out a little more to block the rusher coming around the outside,” Harris says.

That might sound quaint by today’s standards, but Wilkinson coached in a different era, before outsized staffs that included video specialists, nutritionists and team psychologists. He had only four assistants.

“Bud was one of the first coaches who was so well-organized,” says Burris, the halfback who later coached high school football in Texas. “I could tell you our practice routine to this day, it was so strict and exact.”

The Sooners needed repetition to hone their offense, which relied on quick handoffs to the fullback and option pitches.

“You did it over and over until you knew exactly what you were doing,” Harris says. “You could run it blindfolded and just hear the other guys.”

*

Winning Was Birthright

The 1953 season ended with nine consecutive victories, including a 7-0 defeat of Maryland in the Orange Bowl. In 1954, the Sooners went 10-0 and the following season won all 11 games to earn a national championship.

As the streak grew, players had various reasons for not discussing it. Some were superstitious, others simply confident. Winning was considered a birthright. As Harris said, why shouldn’t Oklahoma prevail each Saturday?

Wilkinson downplayed the victories, adamant about the cliche that his players focus on the next game. The only time he broke that rule was for Notre Dame.

Oklahoma had never defeated the Irish and was scheduled to visit South Bend midway through the 1956 season. The previous spring, Wilkinson installed a scheme that included flankers split wide, then kept his special offense under wraps until the Oct. 27 game.

His players recall he was wound up that week, working the team harder than usual. In private, he made a rare comment to his quarterback: “We’ve got this game.”

The tone was set early when Hornung took the ball in the shotgun formation and All-American linebacker Jerry Tubbs broke into the backfield.

“You could hear that hit all the way through the stadium,” Rector says. “It was really a lick, I can tell you. They just quit.”

Hornung says only: “It was a tough ballgame.”

Oklahoma won, 40-0, and might have scored twice as many points if Wilkinson hadn’t inserted the third string. The coach finally had a victory over the Irish. The irony was, his team almost blew the streak the following week.

Playing at Colorado, the Sooners fell behind, 19-0, in a mistake-filled first half. Wilkinson, with an understated flare for the dramatic, uttered only one thing to his players at halftime.

“Men, you don’t deserve to wear these jerseys,” he said. “But there’s one man in this stadium who thinks you can win ... and that’s me.”

Oklahoma swamped the Buffaloes in the second half for a 27-19 victory and, four games later, secured another national title.

How good were the Sooners? After the season, Hornung played in a college all-star game and, doubling as punter, wanted to practice catching snaps from Tubbs, the Oklahoma standout who played center on offense.

Hornung dropped back 15 yards and Tubbs asked, in a Texas drawl, “You gonna stand that far back?”

“Yeah, Jerry, 15 yards is normal.”

The first snap bounced eight yards short. The second bounced five yards short. Hornung recalls thinking: This guy made All-American?

Tubbs stood up and turned around.

“Sorry,” he said. “We never punted at Oklahoma.”

Hornung chuckles at the memory. “It was the truth,” he says. “I looked it up. They had six punts that season and five were quick kicks.”

*

A Simpler Era

Burris watches college football today -- the 100-man rosters and third-down specialists, the nickel backs and designated pass rushers -- and he marvels at how coaches can prepare so many players each week. His era was simpler.

Players remained on the field for offense and defense. Freshmen were ineligible. Scholarships were unlimited but rosters were small.

“Our travel squad was limited to 36 players for a conference game,” he says. “The same guys played most of the time.”

Not only was a smaller team arguably easier to coach, players did not leave school early for the NFL. They faced none of the modern hype and distractions, no ESPN “SportsCenter” to remind them of the streak, no Web sites dissecting each game.

“If it were going on today,” Rector says, “we’d be much more aware.”

But Hornung doesn’t want to hear any claims that winning 47 straight games was easier in the 1950s than it would be now.

“A winning streak is a winning streak,” he says. “Oklahoma played in the Big Seven Conference and there were some good teams. Miami’s schedule isn’t that tough.”

One more thing. Harris recalls that his offense, predicated on speed, got a break from Mother Nature. He says, “All those years, I don’t think we ever played on a wet, muddy field.”

In the near loss at Colorado, it had snowed the day before but the storm subsided by kickoff.

“I think that had a lot to do with the streak,” Harris says. “I mean, there’s got to be a little luck involved.”

*

The Game They Lost

Luck ran out against Notre Dame the following season.

The Irish were struggling to rebuild after Hornung’s departure to the NFL and had lost the previous two weeks. If anything, Oklahoma might finally have succumbed to complacency.

The vaunted Sooner offense could not move the ball that day. Only the defense kept them in the game and Wilkinson later conceded, “I was willing to settle for a scoreless tie in the third quarter.”

But with less than four minutes remaining, the Irish made headway. They drove to within three yards of the end zone and, facing a fourth down, decided to go for broke.

“I was sure we were going to hold them,” Rector says. “They ran a little old option play we hadn’t seen before.”

Notre Dame quarterback Bob Williams faked to his fullback and pitched the ball to Dick Lynch, who ran around right end for a touchdown. Oklahoma had time for a list-ditch drive, but Williams intercepted a pass in the end zone.

It was quiet in Memorial Stadium. “Real quiet,” Burris says. “It was a shocker.”

In the locker room, after the players had finally dragged themselves off the field, Wilkinson told them: “No one will ask you about the games you won, they’ll ask you about the game you lost.”

Sure enough, so many years later, the Oklahoma football media guide includes an account of that afternoon in its “Biggest Games” section. None of the previous victories are mentioned.

Yet there might be renewed appreciation for Oklahoma’s streak if Miami wins the Fiesta Bowl and manages to rebuild after losing quarterback Ken Dorsey next season. If the Hurricanes get close to the record, people might look back.

Maybe then they will understand what Rector was feeling when he lingered on the field after that loss to the Irish. When the streak finally ended, he said, “it became apparent to me what we had done.”

There is a pause.

“Forty-seven games.”