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Do OSU players from 1945 agree with page 72?
Published: 9/8/2012 11:56 AM
Last Modified: 9/8/2012 11:56 AM

On page 72 of Oklahoma State’s football media guide is a recap of the 2011 season with this headline: “Best season in OSU history.”

And my reaction was this: Is that absolutely true? Or do the guys who played on an undefeated team in 1945 have a claim to the title?

I dove into research and came to the conclusion that I agreed with page 72. The Cowboys won 12 games last season, set a school record for victories over ranked opponents (five) and won a Big 12 championship and their first BCS bowl.

I also ranked the top 10 teams in school history (they're listed in today's Tulsa World and at the bottom of this blog) and, when you do this, it becomes a matter of semantics.

Are you ranking best teams? Or most accomplished teams? Or most talented teams? They’re not all the same thing. Even though 2011 tops my list, was last season’s squad more talented than a 1987 Cowboy team with two Pro Football Hall of Famers (Barry Sanders, Thurman Thomas) splitting time at running back?

For the sake of narrowing the field of “best team” candidates, I evaluated the accomplishments of only 10 teams -- the 10 squads in OSU history which earned a spot in the final Associated Press rankings. But that’s not completely fair since the AP ranked only 20 times from 1936-61 and from 1968-88, so Cowboy teams which would have been ranked in the 21-25 range during those years didn’t make the cut. From 1962-67, only 10 teams were ranked but that coincided with a down period for OSU football.

A few research-related observations:

--This is sort of shocking since both coaches went on to win national championships at other schools, but Les Miles and Jimmy Johnson never coached a team at OSU that earned a ranking in the final AP poll.

In fact, Johnson never coached an OSU team that was ranked in any regular season or final AP poll. But Johnson’s 1983 team was ranked 18th in the final UPI poll. That team could play a little defense. No opponent scored more than 21 points against the Cowboys in '83.

Miles coached OSU teams that cracked the regular season rankings in 2003 and 2004, but a 21st-ranked Cowboy team fell out of the poll after a Cotton Bowl loss to Mississippi and a 23rd-ranked Cowboy team vanished from the poll after a loss to Texas Tech in the 2004 regular season finale.

--OSU had finished in the final AP rankings in back-to-back years only once (under Pat Jones in 1987-88) until Mike Gundy’s Cowboys finished 13th and third the last two seasons.

OSU should have made consecutive appearances in the final poll in 1944-45. The 1945 Cowboys finshed fifth. The 1944 Cowboys went 7-1 during the regular season and were ranked 15th. But they finished their season a week earlier than many other teams and inexplicably fell out of the poll before beating TCU 34-0 in the Cotton Bowl.

--Gundy led OSU to spots in the final rankings in 2008, 2010 and 2011. Jones is the only other coach to thrice coach Cowboy squads into the final poll, doing it during 10-wins seasons in 1984, 1987 and 1988.

Gundy would have done it four years in a row if a 2009 team quarterbacked by hobbled Zac Robinson hadn’t lost consecutive games to Oklahoma and Mississippi to end the season. Jones would have coached four teams into the final poll if his 1985 team hadn’t ended that season with three consecutive losses to Iowa State, Oklahoma and Florida State.

--Which coach led OSU to its most years with regular season rankings? Jim Stanley. His teams dented the rankings five consecutive years from 1973-77, but only the ‘76 team wound up in the final poll.

Here's an abbreviated list of how I ranked the 10 OSU teams that were ranked in final AP polls.

No. 1: 2011. Final ranking: No. 3. Record: 12-1.

No. 2: 1945. Final ranking: No. 5. Record: 9-0.

No. 3: 1984. Final ranking: No. 7. Record: 10-2.

No. 4: 1988. Final ranking: No. 11. Record: 10-2.

No. 5: 1976. Final ranking: No. 14. Record: 9-3.

No. 6: 1987. Final ranking: No. 11. Record: 10-2.

No. 7: 2010. Final ranking: No. 13. Record: 11-2.

No. 8: 2008. Final ranking: No. 16. Record: 9-4.

No. 9: 1958. Final ranking: No. 19. Record: 8-3.

No. 10: 1997. Final ranking: No. 24. Record: 8-4.



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Tulsa World sports writer Jimmie Tramel is a former class president at Locust Grove High School. He graduated magna cum laude from Northeastern State University with a journalism degree and, while attending college, was sports editor of the Pryor Daily Times. He joined the Tulsa World on Oct. 17, 1989, the same day an earthquake struck the World Series. He is the OSU basketball beat writer and a columnist and feature writer during football season. In 2007, he wrote a book about Oklahoma State football with former Cowboy coach Pat Jones.

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