The best college football rivalries are usually a combination of geography and moments. Oklahoma and Nebraska shared a conference for 90 years and, especially over the course of three decades between the 1960s and 1980s, frequently battled for top billing in both their conference and in the country at large. That created plenty of opportunities for capital-M Moments.
The drama might have slowed in the 1990s and 2000s, then came to a halt in the 2010s when Nebraska left for the Big Ten. But few rivalries have delivered more epic battles than NU-OU, which resumes Saturday with a nonconference matchup in Norman, Oklahoma. In anticipation, let's look back at the 20 best games between the Sooners and Cornhuskers.
20. Nebraska 17, Oklahoma 14 (1960)
A year after ending OU's conference unbeaten streak that spanned more than a decade, Bill Jennings' Huskers pulled another upset. Just 3-6 for the season, Nebraska trailed 14-0 at halftime but charged back, tying the game on a 68-yard Bill Thornton run, then winning it with a 28-yard field goal by Ron Meade with 1:38 left.
19. No. 11 Nebraska 19, No. 19 Oklahoma 14 (1991)
The Oklahoma program trailed off considerably following NCAA sanctions and Barry Switzer's resignation, but Gary Gibbs' ferocious defense almost did enough to get the job done in this one. Almost. As in 1960, OU led 14-0 early, but redshirt freshman Calvin Jones drove the Huskers into the lead with a 15-yard run with 2:57 left, and the Blackshirts' defense turned the Sooners over on downs near midfield in the final minute.
18. Oklahoma 14, Nebraska 13 (1947)
Bud Wilkinson's first OU-NU game as Sooners head coach was a thriller. In front of 28,000 in freezing cold Lincoln, Nebraska, the Sooners took the lead after recovering their own kickoff at the NU 29 to start the second half. George Thomas scored from 2 yards out a few plays later to give OU a 14-6 lead. The Sooners would close out the win and finish Wilkinson's rookie year on a five-game winning streak. They'd unleash a much longer streak a few years later.
17. No. 3 Nebraska 28, Oklahoma 21 (1970)
Nebraska's progress under Bob Devaney had stalled out a bit in the late 1960s until he named young assistant Tom Osborne as his offensive coordinator in 1969. The Huskers charged to a 9-2 record that season, then split the national title with Texas in 1970. But they had to survive a stiff test from a talented but flawed Oklahoma team first. The unranked Sooners had tied the score at 21 early in the fourth quarter, but an acrobatic, 24-yard catch by Dan Schneiss set up a short touchdown plunge by quarterback Jerry Tagge, and the Huskers prevailed.
16. No. 3 Nebraska 20, No. 2 Oklahoma 10 (2001)
Oklahoma and Nebraska are meeting this year on what is nearly the 20-year anniversary of their last top-five battle.
OU was the defending national champion, and Nebraska would go on to reach the BCS Championship that fall. But first, the Huskers made memories with the Black 41 Flash Reverse Pass. Midway through the fourth quarter, with NU nursing a 13-10 lead, freshman receiver Mike Stuntz took an end around to the left, then threw to quarterback Eric Crouch, who was sprinting down the left sideline. Crouch outran the Sooners defenders into the end zone to both clinch an epic win and all but lock up the 2001 Heisman trophy.
15. No. 9 Oklahoma 21, No. 4 Nebraska 17 (1980)
"Every time Nebraska plays Oklahoma in football," the Lincoln Star's Virgil Parker wrote after this one, "it's like an instant replay of Lucy and Charlie Brown."
Nebraska took an early 10-0 lead, but two long runs by Buster Rhymes set up two short touchdowns, the second of which Rhymes converted into the winning points with 56 seconds left. With help from a fourth-quarter goal-line fumble by NU fullback Andra Franklin, Switzer's Sooners scored their ninth win in 10 tries against Osborne's Huskers. Control of the rivalry would flip very soon.
14. Nebraska 7, Oklahoma 6 (1941)
Maybe the first genuine epic in the series. Oklahoma outgained Biff Jones' Huskers by a 255-148 margin, but three missed field goals and Wayne Blue's 68-yard pick-six (plus Vic Schleich's vital extra point) gave the Huskers the narrowest of victories. It was a happy reversal at the end of a season that had seen Nebraska lose five straight games, all by single digits.
13. No. 4 Oklahoma 17, No. 5 Nebraska 14 (1972)
Once again in this series, an early lead didn't hold up. Oklahoma lost four fumbles and found itself trailing the two-time defending national champion 14-0 in the third quarter, but short touchdowns from Joe Washington and Grant Burget tied the game, and a 41-yard Rich Fulcher field goal with 8:44 to play gave the Sooners their first and only lead of the game.
The Sooners' win was their first in four years against the Huskers. They would lose to Nebraska only once more in the 1970s.
12. No. 3 Nebraska 28, No. 11 Oklahoma 24 (1982)
Losses to Oklahoma had spoiled many a great season for Osborne's Huskers in the 1970s, and Osborne was clearly pretty tired of talking about it when the 1980s rolled around. But Nebraska won its second straight in the series in 1982, and clinched another Orange Bowl bid by taking a 21-10 lead into halftime and holding on late. OU's brilliant freshman Marcus Dupree scored on an 86-yard explosion in the third quarter, but NU held on.
After the game, Osborne told the media, "I hope this win will help our fans get over their Oklahoma hang-up. I admit it's become a minor irritant to me, but I keep reading and hearing about how our players tighten up when they play Oklahoma. That's just not true."
11. No. 10 Oklahoma 23, No. 13 Nebraska 20 (2010)
Nebraska's last game as a member of the Big 12 was both fantastic and massively frustrating. The Huskers bolted to a 17-0 lead early in the second quarter of the 2010 Big 12 championship but quickly self-destructed. OU's Landry Jones and Kenny Stills connected for a 49-yard touchdown, and back-to-back NU turnovers allowed the Sooners to quickly tie the score. With the game tied at 20-20 in the fourth quarter, Jimmy Stevens' 27-yard field goal with 8:28 left provided the winning margin as two late NU drives stalled out near midfield.
10. Nebraska 25, No. 19 Oklahoma 21 (1959)
Though Oklahoma's famous 47-game winning streak under Wilkinson had ended at Notre Dame's hands late in 1957, the Sooners still held on to a staggering 13-year conference unbeaten streak until a visit to Lincoln on Halloween 1959. And it ended at the hands of Jennings, a former Wilkinson assistant.
Two Ron Meade field goals keyed a 13-0 second-half run and gave Nebraska a 25-14 lead. Prentice Gautt, OU's first-ever Black player, scored late, but it wasn't enough. The streak was over.
9. No. 5 Oklahoma 27, No. 2 Nebraska 7 (1985)
8. No. 2 Oklahoma 17, No. 1 Nebraska 7 (1987)
7. No. 3 Oklahoma 20, No. 5 Nebraska 17 (1986)
After falling into a bit of a funk in the early 1980s and drifting from his Wishbone identity, Switzer reversed course out of necessity in 1985. Quarterback and home-state hero Troy Aikman, around whom Switzer was attempting to build something of a pro-style, I-formation attack, had broken his leg against Miami. To best utilize the skills of freshman backup Jamelle Holieway, Switzer brought back the 'Bone. OU was elite again almost immediately.
OU went 33-3 from 1985 to '87, losing three games to Miami and going unbeaten against all other comers. That included a trio of top-five-caliber Nebraska squads.
1985: The Sooners stunned the second-ranked Huskers -- and put themselves in position to eventually win the 1985 national title -- by unleashing Keith Jackson on an unsuspecting world. The freakishly fast tight end raced 88 yards on an end around just 3:39 into the game, and Oklahoma cruised. Nebraska broke a 27-0 shutout with only a late fumble return score.
1986: Trailing 17-7 heading into the fourth quarter in Lincoln, OU charged back thanks once again to Jackson. He scored on a 17-yard pass to tie the game with just 1:22 left; then, with just nine seconds remaining, he caught a thrilling 41-yard pass on third-and-long to set up Tim Lashar's winning field goal.
1987: Despite having to take a second straight trip to Lincoln, and despite starting redshirt freshman Charles Thompson in place of the injured Holieway, OU completely controlled the hometown Huskers, shutting them out for the final three quarters and putting things away with Patrick Collins' 65-yard romp down the sideline. It was Oklahoma's 20th straight win and Nebraska's first loss since OU's visit a year earlier.
6. No. 4 Oklahoma 31, No. 6 Nebraska 24 (1979 Orange Bowl)
5. No. 4 Nebraska 17, No. 1 Oklahoma 14 (1978)
This pair of games had so many twists and turns that Osborne nearly left for Colorado. After six straight losses to the Sooners, Osborne finally got the better of Switzer in 1978. Nebraska forced nine Sooners fumbles and recovered six, including two from Heisman winner Billy Sims in the fourth quarter alone. NU recovered one of his miscues at its 3 with 3:27 left.
NU's reward for finally getting the OU monkey off its back: an almost immediate rematch. Needing only to beat Missouri at home to potentially play for the national title, the Huskers lost 35-31 and ended up getting paired with the Sooners in the Orange Bowl. The game was replete with insinuations of spying -- Nebraska installed unique tactics into its game plan but found out days before the game that OU knew all about them -- but NU still outgained the Sooners by 98 yards. Two interceptions and a series of key penalties, however, did the Huskers in.
In between the two games, Osborne nearly left for Colorado. Hounded by fan disappointment over all the close calls, he later told the local media that he thought "there was enough unhappiness here that maybe I ought to look for a job." After serious consideration, he turned down Colorado. That ended up working out pretty well for both Osborne and Nebraska fans.
4. No. 8 Oklahoma 20, No. 10 Nebraska 17 (1976)
Maybe the most disappointing of those 1970s Nebraska defeats came in 1976. In particularly windy conditions in Lincoln, against an option team whose starting quarterback (Thomas Lott) hadn't completed a pass in five games, NU held a 17-7 lead in the fourth quarter. Insurmountable? Not so much.
It was 17-14 late in the fourth when halfback Woodie Shepard took a handoff to the right, then stepped back and passed to Steve Rhodes for a 47-yard gain. Two plays later, on third-and-20, backup QB Dean Blevins completed a short pass to Rhodes, who quickly pitched to Elvis Peacock for a huge gain. Peacock would go on to score the winning touchdown with just 38 seconds left.
3. No. 1 Nebraska 28, Oklahoma 21 (1983)
Over its past four decades, this rivalry was pretty orderly. Nebraska was favored by more than three points on 14 occasions and won 11 of them; Oklahoma was favored by more than three six times and went 5-1. Only once in that span did an underdog of more than 5.5 points win (OU in 1980). But the Sooners came close to upsetting that order, and taking down one of the best NU teams in history, in 1983.
The Huskers were 11-0, having outscored opponents by an average of 54-15; they had scored at least 50 points in four straight games, while OU was just 7-3 and recovering from a shutout loss at Missouri. But the score was just 28-21 when OU got the ball with six minutes left. The Sooners drove to the NU 2 in the closing seconds, but a penalty, a sack and two pass breakups by backup cornerback Neil Harris kept them out of the end zone and kept NU's unbeaten record intact ... at least until the Huskers played Miami in the Orange Bowl a few weeks later.
2. Oklahoma 10, No. 4 Nebraska 9 (1966)
Spreads from the mid-1960s are difficult to unearth, but OU would have likely been a pretty big underdog when NU came to Norman on Thanksgiving Day in 1966. The Sooners had lost three of four games (and would lose at Oklahoma State a week later), while Nebraska had won 19 regular-season games in a row under Devaney and was 38-4 since the start of the 1963 season.
None of that stopped OU from taking a 7-3 lead into halftime. Nebraska scored to go ahead in the third quarter, but a mishandled snap led to a blocked PAT and kept the Huskers' lead at two. In the final minutes, OU converted three consecutive third-and-longs, the last on a 20-yard draw play to fullback Gary Harper. That set up a 21-yard chip-shot field goal from Mike Vachon and maybe the most unlikely result in the rivalry's history.
1. No. 1 Nebraska 35, No. 2 Oklahoma 31 (1971)
The most famous game of one of college football's most famous rivalries is typically, and somewhat unfairly, distilled down to one play: Johnny Rodgers' famous 73-yard punt return. To be sure, it was a doozy, and one of the sport's most famous returns (albeit one that Sooners fans still insist involved an uncalled clipping penalty).
This game didn't just live up to "Game of the Century" hype because of a first-quarter special teams play, however. It lived up to the hype for everything that followed, too. Nebraska held leads of 14-3 and 28-17, with OU storming back each time. John Harrison's second touchdown catch gave the Sooners a 31-28 lead with seven minutes left, but NU milked the clock and scored the go-ahead points on a 2-yard rushing touchdown by Jeff Kinney with 1:38 left.
On OU's last-gasp possession, Nebraska defensive lineman Rich Glover batted down a fourth-down pass by Jack Mildren. In the battle of the two best teams in the country, Nebraska prevailed. The Huskers still had to win the Orange Bowl against Bear Bryant's unbeaten Alabama to secure another national title, but that was cake by comparison. NU rolled, 38-6.