How Bedlam Football Began in Oklahoma

Fans enjoy sports for many different reasons. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat, watching heroes overcome tragedies in order to triumph, and having a common subject to cheer for. However, the overriding interest in sports is the knowledge that in a few hours we will have a conclusion. Something will be decided on the field of play. Unlike other arenas in life (the workplace or attaining an education) we will know the verdict in a relatively short time from when the event starts.

Sports have all the ups and downs of life in the time it takes some people to eat lunch and take a nap. College football didn't understand this notion until well over one hundred years from its first game kicked off. Not until 1996 did college football allow for an extra period to end all ties. Instead, fans were forced to live with what some say is the equivalent of "kissing your sister". This is how the University of Oklahoma was forced to begin the 1904 season.

OU took on their old foes from Kingfisher College in Norman in the first game of the only season for Head Coach Fred Ewing. In what can only be imagined as being the most boring conclusion in all of sports occurred in this contest...the dreaded...the excruciating...the horrifying...0-0 tie.

The boys from Norman followed the double goose egg bowl with a 33-0 drubbing of a Pauls Valley Town Team in Pauls Valley. Between three and five thousand fans showed up to watch Kansas University roll in to town and paste Oklahoma 16-0 in a highly anticipated game with a powerful Kansas team. After traveling to Lawton to take on the town team of Lawton and emerge with a 6-0 victory, Oklahoma University was ready to play in one of those games that would define a series.

On Bishopsgate Street in London in the year 1247 a priory was established for the order of St. Mary of Bethlehem. As result of a Royal Commission the building was changed from a priory to an asylum for the insane. Historical research shows that around the mid-seventeenth century the unfortunate characters that were housed in the asylum were observed as a form of entertainment by all levels of society, including the nobility.

Popular research says that over 100,000 people a year would visit the asylum to watch the insane, resulting in a nice income for the hospital. As the locals talked about the hospital they referred to it as "Bethlehem" which was eventually shortened, due to time and dialect, to the word, "Bedlam". This caused the word "Bedlam" to become synonymous with the phrase "a house of confusion". On November 6, 1904, college football's version of Bedlam took the field for the first time ever and lived up to the term.

Okay, so maybe the eventual 75-0 final in favor of OU wasn't much of a house of confusion, everybody knew who was in control of this one. But, there was a moment that may have originally lent to the naming of this great series. Playing in Guthrie, the teams played next to a creek that, due to the underdeveloped nature of the game, was considered to be in play. For a description of what happened next, I'll turn to Jay C. Upchurch, who tells this story in his book Tales from the Sooner Sidelines:

"Although the series was not called 'Bedlam' until the 1950s, even from its earliest days, the rivalry has always lived up to its reputation.

Cross-state foes Oklahoma and Oklahoma A&M first met on a frigid November afternoon in 1904. The Rough Riders (they didn't become the Sooners until 1908) met the Aggies that day at Guthrie's Old Island Park, which was bordered by the banks of Cottonwood Creek.

Action was fettered by a stiff north wind so cold that players from both sides suffered frostbite by the conclusion of OU's 75-0 triumph, which included any number of unusual circumstances. The most bizarre occurred on an Aggie punt that was caught by the harsh winds and blown backwards into the icy waters of the nearby creek.

Because there were no end lines that dictated an out-of-bounds area, the ball remained in play as it bobbed up and down in front of a legion of players from both sides, most of whom were hesitant to go in after it.
Seeing a pair of Aggies, including lineman T. Becker Matthews, test the waters, Cook jumped in and was the first player to the ball.

OU's Ed Cook, however, did not fit into that group. He quickly made his way back to shore upon retrieving it. Once there, he touched the ball into the end zone area for a Sooner score.

By the end of the day, every OU player had scored a touchdown. The 75-point margin of victory remains the largest in the series' history."