| Nebraska vs. Oklahoma |
Series Record: Oklahoma leads 40-36-3 Recently: Nebraska has won nine of the past 11 games, with OU snapping a seven-game series losing streak last year. |
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| 1971: Game of last century | ||||
More on the '71 Thanksgiving Day Classic... |
Recent games
| 2000: NU-OU Rivalry ... welcome back! |
| Oklahoma 31, Nebraska 14: Oranges were scattered all over Owen Field, and a bright yellow goal post lay in pieces in a corner of the south end zone. This came to be after the Sooners pronounced they were truly back by thoroughly dominating the No. 1 Huskers and staking claim to their first No. 1 ranking since the end of the 1987 season -- after beating Nebraska. Key contributors for the Soooners were QB Josh Heupel, who passed for 300 yards and a touchdown, and DB Derrick Strait, who returned an interception 32 yards for a score. The Sooners held the Cornhuskers scoreless over the final 53:11 after NU jumped out to a 14-0 lead. Game story and post-game audio | Box score |
| 1997: Maybe it was time for the series to end |
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Nebraska 69, Oklahoma 7: It was fitting that Tom Osborne reached the 250-win milestone against an Oklahoma program that confounded him so much in the 1970s. This game had no resemblance to the classic duels between the old Big Eight heavyweights. It was the most lopsided game in the series' 78-game history. The Huskers led 34-0 at half, with the onslaught starting with two Kris Brown field goals, touchdown runs by Joel Makovicka, Correll Buckhalter and Scott Frost, and a touchdown reception by Bobby Newcombe. It was 55-0 before the Sooners scored against the team that would go on to win a share of the national championship. |
| 1996: Nebraska scoring machine |
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Nebraska 73, Oklahoma 21: The second in a string of blowouts, the Huskers scored 45 points in the second and third quarters on their way to hanging a series-record 73 points on the Sooners. It was the most points ever given up by an OU team. The 52-point margin of victory was the largest ever in the series, though that record would be broken the following year. Nebraska converted five OU turnovers into points. Jason Peter's sack of Justin Fuente on the Sooners' first play from scrimmage set the tone that never wavered. |
| 1995: Defense gets into the scoring act |
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Nebraska 37, Oklahoma 0: The 1995 Huskers were considered one of the greatest teams in the history of college football. No doubt, the Sooners came out of this game believers. The Blackshirt defense scored the first two touchdowns, with Jamel Williams returning an interception 36 yards in the second quarter and Tony Veland running a fumble recovery back 57 in the third. The Sooners, meanwhile, generated just 241 yards, 51 on the ground. The victory was Nebraska's 36th straight regular-season win, en route to their second national championship in a row. |
| 1994: Blackshirts leave OU black and blue |
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Nebraska 13, Oklahoma 3: The top-ranked Huskers turned to their defense in the win that earned them to right to play Miami in the Orange Bowl, where they would win Tom Osborne's first national title as head coach. Oklahoma mustered only 179 yards, 47 in the second half and minus-5 in the fourth quarter. The game's only touchdown came in the fourth quarter when Abdul Muhammad caught a 44-yard pass to set up Nebraska's only touchdown, a 1-yard run by quarterback Brook Berringer. |
| 1993: A freezing defensive struggle |
| Nebraska 21, Oklahoma 7: On a day when the wind chill was below zero in Lincoln, the defense controlled the day. The teams were knotted at 7-7 until the fourth quarter, when Nebraska scored twice in 13 seconds to put the game away. After Abdul Muhammad scored on an 11-yard pass from Tommie Frazier, David Seizys recovered a fumble on the ensuing kickoff. Calvin Jones scored on the next play for a two-touchdown lead. |
Highlights
| Sooners assume control | ||||
| The series was almost all OU for nearly half a century. Starting in 1943, Oklahoma rattled off 16 consecutive victories -- winning by an average score of 36-8 -- and won of 31 of the next 39 meetings. The Sooners had at least one player finish among the Top 10 in Heisman Trophy balloting seven years in a row, starting with 1952 winner Billy Vessels, and none of them ever lost to Nebraska. | ||||
| Huskers end Sooner dominance | ||||
| On Halloween 1959, Nebraska locked horns with an Oklahoma team that had not lost in 74 consecutive conference games. The Huskers emerged with a stunning 25-21 win in Lincoln. Nebraska, which had not beaten Oklahoma in 16 years, held off a last minute OU comeback attempt when Ron Meade intercepted a Bobby Boyd pass in the end zone. The goal posts were torn down and paraded around town. Chancellor Clifford Hardin canceled classes the following Monday so students could have an extra day off to celebrate. | ||||
| A pall was cast over this one | ||||
| In 1963, the Huskers defeated the Sooners 29-20 on the day after President Kennedy was assassinated. Officials of both schools did not want to play the game, but the NCAA and Big Eight requested that the game go on because Oklahoma had one game remaining and the Orange Bowl needed a representative.
The Huskers led 29-7 before Oklahoma scored twice in the final two minutes to make the final score closer. | ||||
| Osborne ends OU jinx | ||||
| By 1978, Nebraska fans were getting antsy because Tom Osborne hadn't beaten the Sooners in five tries. Thanks to six Oklahoma fumbles that were recovered by the Huskers, they got it done. The biggest drop was by Billy Sims at the Nebraska 3-yard line with 3:27 left in the game. Jim Pillen recovered to seal the upset of the No. 1 Sooners. The Huskers had scored the winning points on Billy Todd's field goal with 11:51 remaining. | ||||
| Drawing even | ||||
| Tom Osborne was bedeviled by Oklahoma throughout his career, but, thanks to winning the last seven straight under his watch, he finished with a 13-13 record against the Sooners. Maybe even sweeter than that, he handed nemesis/friend Barry Switzer his last regular-season loss in 1988.
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| Sooners get revenge | ||||
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Noteworthy
- Don't be overly concerned about who scores first: The winning team has come from behind in 25 of the past 34 games.
- Five times the Sooners have given NU its only regular-season loss (1964, '66, '75, '79, '87); twice the Huskers have given OU its only regular-season loss (1971 and '78).
- In the 22 games in which both teams were ranked, the lower-ranked team has won 10 times. Also, an unranked team has upset a ranked team four other times.
- Nebraska has entered the last 31 OU contests nationally ranked, including a 14-game stretch from 1977 to 1990 when the Huskers were ranked in the Top 10.
- Oklahoma's largest margin of victory is 48 points -- 48-0 in 1949, 55-7 in 1954 and 54-6 in 1956.
- Oklahoma's longest win streak in the series is 16 games (1943-58). Nebraska's longest win streak is seven games, (1931-36 and 1991-1997).
- Since the Associated Press poll began in 1936, the NU-OU game has had at least one ranked team 55 times in 64 contests.
- Nebraska won the first two games in the series, starting in 1912, and dominated to the point of going 16-3-3 for the first 22 games.
| R E L A T E D L I N K S: |
Nebraska exclusive team report
Oklahoma exclusive team report
| T O P N E W S |
