The Bedlam Series refers to the athletics rivalry between the University of Oklahoma Sooners and the Oklahoma State University Cowboys of the Big 12 Conference. Both schools were also members of the Big 8 Conference before the formation of the Big 12 Conference in 1996, and both were divisional rivals in the Big 12 South Division prior to 2011.
Video Bedlam Series
History
The Bedlam Series is, like most other intrastate rivalries, a rivalry that goes beyond one or two sports. Both schools also have rivalries with other schools, though most of those rivalries are limited to one or two sports at the most. The rivalry is all the more intense since their games often decide the conference championship.
While the football and basketball games stand today as the marquee events in the Bedlam Series, the term "Bedlam" actually began with the rivalry between the schools' prestigious wrestling programs, more particularly the raucous crowds that attended the matches held at Oklahoma State's Gallagher-Iba Arena.
When the Bedlam Series gained Ford and the Bank of Oklahoma as corporate sponsors, the series became much more formalized. A points system was adopted in order to award a winner of the all athletic competitions combined between the two schools. A crystal bell trophy is awarded to individual Bedlam game winners (such as football), in addition to a trophy for the overall series champion for that year. The "Bedlam Bell" is modeled after the bell clapper in Old Central, the oldest building on Oklahoma State's campus. For a time, the actual bell clapper was a traveling trophy for the two schools, until the popularity of this tradition waned.
Maps Bedlam Series
Football
The first Bedlam football game was held at Island Park, now known as Mineral Wells Park, in Guthrie, Oklahoma. It was a cold, and very windy day with the temperatures well below the freezing mark. At one moment in the game when the Oklahoma A&M Aggies were punting, the wind carried the ball backwards behind the kicker. If the Oklahoma A&M squad recovered the ball it would be a touchback and if the University of Oklahoma squad recovered it, it would be a touchdown. The ball rolled down a hill into the half-frozen creek. Since a touchdown was at stake, members of both teams dove into the icy waters to recover the ball. A member of the OU team came out with the ball and downed it for a touchdown. OU won the game, 75-0. Though this was not the source of the name "Bedlam", the scene was clearly an apt beginning for the Bedlam Series in football.
Author Steve Budin, whose father was a New York bookie, has recently publicized the claim that the 1954 Bedlam Game was fixed by mobsters in his book Bets, Drugs, and Rock & Roll (ISBN 1-60239-099-1). Allegedly, the mobsters threatened and paid off a cook to slip laxatives into a soup eaten by many OU Sooner starting players, causing them to fall violently ill in the days leading up to the game. OU was victorious in the end, but their 14-0 win did not cover the 20-point spread they had in their favor. However, many people involved in the 1954 contest do not recall any incident like the one purported by Budin to have occurred.
Oklahoma currently leads the series 87-18-7, making it the most lopsided, continuous in-state rivalry in the nation as of 2017. The series has historically been very lopsided in the Sooners' favor; Oklahoma State has defeated OU twice in a row just three times since World War II, and has never done it three times in a row. Although the series has been interrupted twice since its inception, it has been uninterrupted since 1910, tying it with North Carolina St./Wake Forest for the third-longest continuous rivalry in FBS Division 1 college football, after only Minnesota/Wisconsin (uninterrupted since 1907), and Clemson/South Carolina (uninterrupted since 1909). It is also the longest uninterrupted rivalry between two public universities, in the same state, that have a game named "University of _ vs. _ State University."
Game results
Men's basketball
Oklahoma owns the all-time series record in men's basketball, 135-95. The Sooners swept the 2013-14, 2014-15 and 2015-16 regular season Bedlam series for the fourth and fifth time in the last 10 seasons. OSU's last series sweep came in 2017. OU is 17-6 in the last 23 Bedlam games and is now 25-18 vs. the Cowboys since the formation of the Big 12 (135-95 all-time).
Wrestling
Oklahoma State holds a large advantage in the schools' wrestling rivalry, the original "Bedlam Series". The Cowboy wrestling program currently holds a 134-27-10 record against the Sooners, which is all the more remarkable considering that both schools have long been national powers in wrestling. Oklahoma has won seven team national championships in its history, while Oklahoma State's wrestling program has a record thirty-four team national titles.
See also
- List of most played rivalries in NCAA Division I FBS
References
External links
- Bedlam Series at OKState.com
- Bedlam Series at SoonerSports.com
- Voices of Oklahoma interview with Bob Barry Sr. First person interview conducted on March 31, 2011, with Bob Barry Sr. Original audio and transcript archived with Voices of Oklahoma oral history project.
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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