|
|
 |
The Oklahoma Football Encyclopedia
EXCERPT
|
|
| |
|
| |
| The Oklahoma Football Encyclopedia by Ray Dozier |
|
|
 |
|
This excerpt may not be reproduced without express written consent of Sports Publishing LLC. Please feel free to link to this page. We encourage anyone interested in receiving a percentage of online sales from their referrals on this title to sign up for our AFFILIATE PROGRAM. " |
|
|
|
EXCERPT: Game Summaries
Sooner Magic: First Victory Over Texas (1905)
Both teams entered the 1905 game with identical 3-2 records. The Horns were a heavy 2-1 favorite in posted pool room odds, according to the Dallas Morning News. The 1905 matchup was played in Oklahoma City before 2,500 frenzied fans.
Both offenses were sluggish in the first half, which was highlighted by fumbles, penalties, and no points.
Late in the second half, Texas marched from midfield to the Oklahoma goal line, but the Boomers held inside their one-yard line.
Oklahoma drove 105 yards (in 1905 the length of the field was 110 yards), highlighted by a crowd-pleasing play by halfback Harry Hughes. Hughes, also a track hurdler, took the football and leaped over a charging Texas safety. The Texas player got into position to make a tackle, but Hughes amazed the crowd by jumping over the Texas defender then had a clean shot to the goal line. After gaining 55 yards on the run, Hughes was caught from behind by a Longhorn inside the UT 10. Oklahoma could get no closer than the five-yard line and had to give up possession on downs.
With about a minute left in the game, Texas’ left halfback and team captain, Don Robinson, took the ball and proceeded around end. Before Robinson could get behind his wall of blockers, Oklahoma center Robert Severin smashed through the line and grabbed Robinson around the knees and carried him back across the goal line and slammed the Texas player to the turf for a safety.
Longhorn coach Ralph Hutchinson protested the safety to officials. He believed Severin was offside on the play. The play stood.
The Oklahoma fans tossed their hats, canes, ribbons, and chrysanthemums in the air celebrating Oklahoma’s 2-0 lead. That’s the way the final score stood.
“When the safety was made, the crowd rushed madly across the field and carried the Oklahoma players off on their shoulders, by way of celebration of the first victory over the University of Texas,” the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
The Dallas Morning News wrote “the Texas team did not finish the one minute of play, seeing that victory was out of the question.”
Hutchinson said it was “useless” to try to continue the game because of the swarming crowd.
The Daily Oklahoman reported that the game was halted several times when the crowd had to be moved off the field.
The celebration by the Oklahoma fans “was kept up until midnight and after,” the Star-Telegram wrote.
“Tonight, hundreds of Oklahoma students are parading in the streets celebrating their victory,” the News wrote.
“The greatest football game ever played in the territory,” the Oklahoman accounted.
The Austin American-Statesman, however, was bitter in its remarks about the Longhorns’ first-ever loss to Oklahoma. “The result of the game may be that Texas will hereafter refuse to play these small colleges unless it be here [in Austin] or at some place where all the arrangements can be made beforehand to eradicate any such foolish performances as were tolerated in Oklahoma City.”
Although the two teams met in Oklahoma City again in 1906, in Austin in 1907, 1909, 1910 and 1911, Norman in 1908 and Dallas in 1912, that prognostication of “someplace” else finally came true eight years later. The two teams met in Houston in 1913, then in Dallas the next five years. A game was played in Norman in 1922 and Austin in 1923. For five years after that both teams did not play each other. Oklahoma and Texas resumed their rivalry in 1929 in Dallas. Since then, the game each year has been played in Dallas, which is about halfway between the two universities, at the Texas State Fair.
Coach Owen’s first Boomer team finished the season 7-2 with three more shutouts—55-0 over Kingfisher College, 58-0 over Central Normal and 29-0 over Bethany College.
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
