In the spirit and tradition of a true “Sooner,” the OU varsity football program got a head start on the state, playing its inaugural football game in December 1895.
Oklahoma derives its name from the Chocktaw Indian words okla and humma, which translates as “red people,” and officially became a state on Nov. 16, 1907, the 46th state admitted to the Union.
OU was founded as the state university, located in Norman, in December 1890, five years before the school’s first football game and 17 years before Oklahoma statehood.
That first Oklahoma football game was hardly memorable other than its distinction of being the debut of a program that would come to be recognized as one of college football’s greatest success stories.