How Bennie Owen Came to Oklahoma

Oklahoma would make a trip to Austin before returning to Norman to thrash the Oklahoma State Military Institute 71-4. The trip to Austin must have felt like a nightmare compared to these two routs that were sandwiched around it. In fact, the day after the University of Texas rolled Oklahoma 40-10, The Daily Oklahoman headline read "The Texans Won: Game Was Not Hard Fought".

Oklahoma apparently benefited from some Texas turnovers in the first half to trail at half to the much more talented Steers 17-10. However, Texas obliterated the Rough Riders in the second half en route to the dominating victory. After the win over Oklahoma State Military Institute the following week, the Rough Riders were ready to compete with the team from Bethany College in Kansas.

What is now a small, residential Liberal Arts College in Lindsborg, Kansas was once a football power referred to as the "Terrible Swedes". With a young coach who learned from one of the all-time great coaches, Fielding Yost, the Swedes came in still puffing their chests from a 12-10 victory on Thanksgiving in 1903. Oklahoma was coached by their own disciple of Fielding Yost, but couldn't get a solid beat going throughout the 1904 season. The Daily Oklahoman previewed OU leading up to the Thanksgiving Game:

"The fortunes of the University of Oklahoma football squad for 1904 have been somewhat checkered, but it is probable the work of the year has laid a better foundation for the future than any season so far. The varsity has a good acquisition in the person of their new coach, Mr. Ewing. He is an experienced and successful football player himself, having made an enviable record during his years at Knox College, Iowa. There he worked under a coach who learned his business at Michigan under the famous Yost...Up to Thanksgiving the team has played seven games and lost two out of the seven. In the matter of points they have made 194 against 60 by all opponents."

Oklahoma had experienced a successful season overall, but were marred by inconsistency. The Rough Riders hoped to change all of this, but they weren't just playing any old football team. They were playing a team that had created quite a legend for itself, mainly the legend of a young head coach. The Daily Oklahoman previewed the "Terrible Swedes" of Bethany College:

"The 'Terrible Swedes' of Bethany College form one of the most noted and unique figures among football teams of the west. The present team has been under organization for the past four years and in that time have defeated nearly every team of importance in the western section of footballdom. Unique because of their name and supposed Swedish nationality (which, by the way, is a myth, there being a preponderance of American players on the team every season.) Remarkable because of their having been beaten by only one team under college rules in four seasons, also for making the highest scores ever made by any western team- 105 to nothing against Hodsington in 1902. Nearly everyone even though not directly interested in football has heard of the "Terrible Swedes" of Kansas.

During those four years the Swedes have been coached by the famous Benny Owen, who began his football career as the marvelous quarter back of the "ever victorious" team at Kansas University in '93."

That "famous" Benny Owen believed in the same principles that Fielding Yost set forth some years before. Speed over size and imagination over practicality. Owens "Terrible Swedes" didn't meet their match in Oklahoma City on that Thanksgiving Day, finishing the Rough Riders helter-skelter season with a 36-9 thrashing. All wasn't bad for OU fans afterward though. Sometime after, the Oklahoma Athletic Department managed to lure the famous coach away from the "Swedes" and began the first dynasty of OU football.

Owen would last 22 seasons as Head Coach and several more as Athletic Director. The "monster", as OU football was later dubbed by Barry Switzer, began immediately following that Thanksgiving Day Massacre. The "Swedes" would disappear to eventually land in NAIA ball, while Oklahoma would become the new juggernaut. Oklahoma would eventually play in the house...that Owen built.