The Oklahoma Sooners and the Ole Miss Rebels will face off on Saturday for just the second time ever. OU will head to Oxford, Mississippi trying to stop their recent skid.
To remember the other matchup between these two programs, we have to go all the way back to 1999. On December 31, the final football game of the 20th century took place at the Independence Bowl in Shreveport, Louisiana.
A young rookie head coach named [autotag]Bob Stoops[/autotag] was in the final game of his first year at the helm in Norman, wrapping up a promising 1999 season where he’d taken the Sooners back to a bowl game and gotten them back to a winning record. Oklahoma entered the game at 7-4, playing in their first bowl game since 1994.
The former Florida defensive coordinator was matched up against David Cutcliffe, who had the Rebs back in the Independence Bowl for the second straight year.
Ole Miss bolted out to a 21-3 lead at halftime, but the Sooners charged back into the game, making it 21-18 at the end of the third quarter. OU took a 25-24 lead with over two minutes left, but an Ole Miss field goal as time expired gave the Rebels a 27-25 victory. Still, a 7-5 debut season for Stoops set the table for what was to come over the next quarter-century in Norman. He was bringing the program back to its former glory.
That game was the last one the Sooners would lose until October 27, 2001, when Nebraska finally ended OU’s fantastic 17-game winning streak. Of course, that includes the 2000 national title season, when Oklahoma went 13-0 and won it all in Stoops’ second year.
That game also marked the start of 25 straight seasons where the Sooners have made a bowl game, a streak that is still active today. Saturday’s game will be an important one if OU wants to extend that streak, as the Sooners are in danger of missing a bowl game for the first time since John Blake’s final season in 1998.