The Texas-Oklahoma Series: How An Aberration Distorted The Longhorn Psyche
Texas leads the Oklahoma series 63-51-5, but many of those wins were earned before World War II. Since DKR entered the scene in 1957, the series has been 33-31-3 in favor of the Longhorns.
More recent trends have been less than satisfactory.
Since 2000, the Sooners are 17-8 against Texas, despite a considerable portion of that record overlapping a terrific run under Mack Brown where Texas went 158-48 and were arguably the premier college football program between 2000-2009, a span where Texas went 108-19.
Squaring that has never been easy for Texas fans.
Mack Brown’s struggles with a peer level Oklahoma still haunts the psyche of Longhorn faithful and Texas football’s rough road since 2010 only reinforced it. A lot of recent Texas fan psychological baggage is attributable to that period – particularly given Mack’s larger excellence outside of the Cotton Bowl – and it is the fundamental outlier in the tenor of this series.
Judging the series without that context obfuscates a fundamental shift.
I’ll explain. Here’s the big picture since Texas hired DKR:
YearsHead Coachvs. OUOverall Winning Percentage at Texas1957-1976Royal12-7-1.7741977-1986Akers5-4-1.7311986-1991McWilliams3-2.5441992-1997Mackovic3-2-1.5921998-2013Brown7-9.7672014-2016Strong1-2.4332017-2020Herman1-3.6402021-2024Sarkisian1-2.674
From 1957 to 1997, no Texas coach had a career losing record against Oklahoma. Those four coaches offer a wide range in terms of personality, approach to the game and overall success at Texas.
From 1957-1986 the game was generally played by two good teams, though we can point to substandard periods on either side. Talent and experience were often the differentiating factor on the win-loss ledger because motivation, preparation, physicality and general anger were considered a given on both sides.
Understanding that qualifier is crucial.
Understanding that it’s a fight and playing with athletic desperation has always been the necessary precondition for making talent and game planning relevant.
DKR and Akers were a combined 17-11-2 against Oklahoma in some part because their teams were defined by physicality. Classic Texas was default physical. Nor was motivation ever an issue. It was understood on both sides that the game is a parking lot brawl, momentum swings were guaranteed and that confidence and aggression is rewarded.
During that time period, there were some years where Texas was beaten by a clear talent differential (see Royal and Akers’ last years at Texas) and the same happened to Oklahoma (Royal humiliated OU’s offenses in the early 1960s) – occasionally there were even blowouts when one team was elite and the other lacking – but either team getting punked out on the field for lack of preparation, lack of effort or due to coaching scared was not really a thing.
That was alien to the whole understanding of the series as a fight. Even as the quality of the football degraded on both sides from the mid 80s to the late 90s.
The 6-4-1 Texas winning record vs Oklahoma with flawed McWilliams and Mackovic teams is proof of that fact. I attended about half of those games and the level of intensity and physicality that some pretty mediocre to frankly bad Texas teams brought to the Cotton Bowl was memorable.
I watched multiple unranked and pedestrian Longhorn teams defeat ranked OU teams. I never heard Texas pads pop like that again that year.
Big upsets went the other way as well.
In 1995, a 5 win Howard Schnellenberger Sooners squad somehow tied a 10 win Texas after OU trailed 21-0 in the first quarter.
In 1996, a 3-8 John Blake OU team upset a Mackovic Horn team that would go on to blow out A&M and whip juggernaut Nebraska in the Big 12 title game. That 3-8 Blake team got blown out by San Diego State and Kansas, lost by 52 to Nebraska at home and also lost at home to Tulsa. But in Dallas, they played like a maniacs and stole a 3 point win.
The margins in all of those games were tiny and almost all of the games were decided late. The overall product on both sides had generally depleted, but intensity had not.
The series really changed in its fundamental character under Mack Brown.
The Mack Brown era can’t just be understood in terms of Mack’s 7-9 record against Oklahoma. But, but Tom Herman had a worse record!
That was never the point.
The point is that Texas teams ranging from good to very good – at least at athletic parity to their rival – were humiliated by margins of 52, 49, 42 and 38 points. Not to mention the 12-0 shutout of a top 5 Texas team that would win a national title a year later.
Blows outs, though rare, weren’t new to the series. But a roughly equivalent team repeatedly looking timid, unready and unprepared was new and no Texas or Oklahoma coach had ever been blown out so often and so viciously in the entire history of the series.
During that era, Texas fans saw multiple high level Texas teams not even compete on the field or on the headset.
This was the fundamental aberration in the history of the series and it distorted everything.
Why did it happen?
Because Mack Brown coached Texas and Bob Stoops coached Oklahoma. Everything flowed from that.
The thought exercise is simple: switch the staffs. What are the results in Dallas?
Right.
What’s the data post Mack Brown?
Not acceptable from a wins and losses perspective, but actually more in line with the series historically from a competitive standpoint.
The 3-8 run post-Mack with Texas teams that have ranged from awful to pretty good had a wider talent gap vis a vis Oklahoma than Brown’s Longhorn teams, but post Mack teams have played much more competitively in those losses.
Seven of Texas’ losses over this period are by a single score or less. The other loss was by 12 points in a Big 12 title game that was tied entering the 4th quarter.
There is only one fundamental outlier in the history of this series with respect to basic competitiveness on game day with comparable football teams and that outlier is the second winningest coach in Texas history and a national champion.
That is the monkey still on our backs.
That aberration still fundamentally colors the psyche of Texas fans, reinforced by recent results. Though that reinforcement is more about the losses piling up rather than being humiliated on game day.
That’s why Longhorns fans were upset to watch an inferior Oklahoma team outplay and out coach Texas last year, particularly when they came out with their hair on fire and Texas came out like it was a home game against Baylor. Texas got it together quickly, but whether perceptual or real, it felt like the Sooners had stolen the initiative. A lot of Texas fan demons rose up.
The Longhorn coach who changes the current dynamic will be revered.
The formula is pretty straightforward. Build really good teams. That matters the most.
Then prepare the team and staff mentally for an opponent whose state and university is defined by their football and by this game above all others. If you pretend it’s just another game for them or you, you’re wrong and it will show on the field.
I expect the series to revert to its prior balance or even see Texas begin a run of its own, but my expectations mean little to what happens on the field on Saturday.
Understanding the game’s desperation is the necessary precondition that brings all else to bear.
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