Sooner Century
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SOONER CENTURY No collegiate footballprogram in the country, with thepossible exception of Notre Dame, can lay claim to a richer tradition of football excellence than the University of Oklahoma . In keeping with OU's decades offootball dominance, it was inevitable that as a part of Sooner football's centennial celebration, a carefully written, pictorial history ofOklahoma football would appear . J. Brent Clark, a 1971 honors graduate of OU and a 1975 graduate of the OU College of Law, had won the 1994 Oklahoma Book Award in non-fiction forhis first book, 3rd Down and Forever. Clark was commissioned by the University of Oklahoma FoundationInc. to research and write a comprehensive history of Sooner football, chronicling all 100 years of gridiron exploits . The Touchdown Club of Oklahoma and The Daily Oklahoman provided additional financial support. The result of this multi-year project is Sooner Century : 100 Glorious Years of Oklahoma Football, excerpts from which areoffered here byauthor Clark ashis tribute to thoseBigRed stalwarts who have brought so much excitement to sportsfans everywhere. -EDITOR 100 Glorious Years of Oklahoma Football by J. Brent Clark The auctioneer raised his aged wooden gavel over his head sat down one last time in a corner booth and gazed up at the and slammed it down on the Formica table top with author- scoreboards . ity. "Sold to bidder number 55!" he barked . With that, the The ancient plywood panels began reflecting Sooner foot- distinctive old Town Tavern football scoreboards that had ball game scores in 1947, the year the Sooner legend, Bud hung, seemingly forever, above the heads of the great, the Wilkinson, took overthe reigns of the Sooner program . The old near great and merely mortal, in Campus Corner's vener- counterman lit up a Camel and, as smoke curled overhead, able meeting place, had found a new owner. On this day, the reflected back over the years of Oklahoma football glory. He Town Tavern was closing its doors forever. Later in the had witnessed a few of the truly great games personally . evening, long after the last bidder and curiosity seeker had Others had taken place long before he had peeled his first wandered away from the corner of Boyd and Asp, an old potato at the Tavern . He had, however, heard Norman natives Town Tavern counterman, his face lined with deep creases, talk about how football had arrived on the OU campus. 1995 FALL 25 the athlete . It came as no surprise, dance of enthusiasm, had suffered a Let's Get Up a then, that the long-haired, brazen knee injury in practice and could only young man thereafter declared from hobble along on the sidelines, yelling Football Team! his seat in Bud Risinger's barber shop, instructions and encouragement. A "Let's get up a football team!" North-South gridiron had been laid The old style game, a kind of con- Harts became the team's first cap- out on a field of low prairie grass just trolled chaos, is what young V. L. tain and coach. Few of the students north of the lone University building . Parrington had observed while at attending the University in the fall of Today the site is slightly north and Harvard, and that is the game he 1895 had ever seen a football game, west ofHolmberg Hall . A single strand introduced to a few brave souls in of wire fence was strung around the Norman, Oklahoma, in the fall of 1897 . playing rectangle . Team members Actually, the first football team repre- Joe Merkle and Jap Clapham volun- senting the University of Oklahoma teered teams of horses to haul was organized in September 1895 by a wagonfuls of dirt to fill the field's buf- handsome, confident lad with compel- falo wallows . ling gray eyes . His name was John A. On the eve of the contest, Harts Harts. Fancying himself an athlete discovered he was still two players and with more than a smattering of short ofa full team. Atthe lastminute, bravado, Harts had played football on the resourceful Harts enlisted the bar- a college team in Winfield, Kansas, ber, Bud Risinger, and Fred Perry, a and as a school boy growing up north 26-year-old married man who drove of Wichita . Harts undoubtedly was Norman's street sprinkling wagon . aware from newspaper accounts that Risinger and Perry, representative of the first organized football game in Oklahoma pioneers, could not resist Oklahoma Territory had taken place Harts' exhortations and leapt into the a year before, in November 1894, be- fray. Neither, of course, was enrolled tween Oklahoma High School (later since the Oklahoma Territory had only in the University . Oklahoma City Central High) and a a mere handful of high schools . Ofthe The opponent was from Oklahoma rowdy group of townies billing them- 148 students registered atthe Univer- City and was composed of high school selves as the "Terrors ." The Terrors sity that fall, 121 were taking high students, a few students from the had taken a terrible beating in that school work. The game offootball was Methodist College there and a couple game . a curiosity only, but the glib tongue of oftown toughs . Most importantly, the In any event, when Harts' fellow Jack Harts ensured a representative varsity team had played a prior game students brought out an old Spalding attendance at the one and only Uni- or two. The visitors drubbed Harts' football on a golden fall afternoon in versity game of the 1895 season . valiant men, 34-0 . The University's Norman, they discovered Jack Harts Harts himself, in an over-abun- first football team, in its first game, 0 U N O U O C N f/1 N U OUfootball was in its fifth season, and the varsity had a four-year win streak on the line when coach Vernon L. Parrington's 1899 aggregation met defeat at the hands of the Arkansas City (Kansas) Town Team. 26 SOONER MAGAZINE ball from 1926-1929 . As the head coach of Louisiana State in Baton Rouge, he had refused a request bythe "Kingfish," Governor Huey P. Long, to address Jones' Bayou Tigers at half time of a football game . Thereafter, Jones became available to coach the Sooners . Gene Corotto, a sophomore-to-bein the spring of 1935, recalls Jones' ar- rival on campus . "We'd already had one spring practice under Lewie Hardage . When Biff Jones arrived, we had another one ." Reflective ofJones' no-nonsense ap- proach, instructions to the players were typewritten and distributed. New wooden lockers replaced coat hooks in the dressing room . Jones looked out for his players . In ex- change, he demanded discipline and respect . "Most ofthe boys were scared ofthe guy," Corotto recalls, referring to the 6-foot, 3-inch coach. "When he hollered at ,you, you didn't jump once, you jumped three times." While there was renewed interest in the fortunes of Sooner football, inhabitants ofOklahoma were strug- gling to cope with the effects of the Dust Bowl . "We'd practice in dust storms so thick, you couldn't see the sun . By the end of'practice, we were covered in thick dust," Corotto re- West Point graduate Lawrence "Biff" Jones brought a hard-nosed, military calls. approach to coaching the Sooners from 193 .5-36. He left with a 9-6-3 record . Conditioning and toughness were the hallmarks of Jones-coached squads . Popular offensive formations of the day were the single-wing and the double-wing . End sweeps by fleet neither scored a point nor made a first the 1930s. Work was hard to find in halfbacks complemented punishing down. The disconsolate University those days. He counted himself lucky players trudged back to Risinger's dives by fullbacks . The quarterback to find steady work on Norman's bus- received the ball from center some barber shop where they washed up, tling Campus Corner . His musings dressed their wounds and discussed four yards deep, then turned his shoul- carried him back to the year 1935 . A the merits and demerits offootball . "I ders toward the line of scrimmage to new football coach had arrived in went out home and climbed in bed," conceal the ball and induce deception . The Clapham remembered. "I was too sore Norman, he recalled. Sooners featured outstanding tackles in to do the chores, but I sure slept good . J. W. "Dub" Wheeler and . I was feeling kind of blue, but I had Ralph Brown Backs Nick Robertson Bill liked the rough physical contact." Biff Jones and Breedon would join them in earning all-conference honors . Arrives The season opened with blankings The old counterman found a heavy of two opponents, Colorado, 3-0, and ceramic coffee mug and brewed him- Lawrence "Biff"Jones had attended New Mexico, 25-0 . Then came the self a cup of coffee before settling West Point, graduatingin 1917 . Jones annual showdown in Dallas . With the down again in the corner booth. He was a blunt-spoken, hard-nosed mili- smallest crowd ever on hand at Fair had his own painful recollections of tary man. He had coached Army foot- Park Stadium for the annual meeting, 1995 FALL 27 16,000, the Sooners fell 12-7 . Jones' to validate their endless optimism . By he emerged from a low-slung Hudson squad played fiercely all season long, the fall of 1947, the year the first Town automobile onto the OU campus in the shutting out five ofits nine opponents . Tavern scoreboard went up, a regular winter of 1946 . Such was not the case . The Sooners' six wins were the most customer, Charles "Bud" Wilkinson, In fact, Bud knew better than anyone since 1920 .