How Oklahoma Football Started in a Barber Shop

It really happened without any fanfare. It really happened without a cheering crowd or a marching band. It really just happened in a simple barbershop, a barbershop owned and operated by a man named Bud. Bud Risinger's Barbershop on Main Street in Norman would have a lot to do with the early years of Oklahoma Football, specifically, the verbal birth of the idea when a young man named John Harts spoke up rather regularly, "Let's get up a football team."

While the sport had been played recreationally since the inception of this territorial university, but this time John Harts meant something different. Harts wanted to have an actual, organized football team like the schools in the east. The true historian of the beginning of Oklahoma Football, the first Sports Information Director in college sports history, was Harold Keith. Keith spoke of the early years of the football program in his book, Oklahoma Kickoff, explaining that the first record of football in the area was in 1894 in the Norman Transcript with a quote that, "Football is all the rage at the University."

There is no doubt why a sport that was so violent in nature was becoming so popular in an area like this rugged frontier. This was an area where the next day was as unknown as the next year, an area where outlaws like the notorious Bill Doolin were frequently spotted and spoken of in newspapers, an area in settlement infancy. This was the type of place that had a history of being here today and gone tomorrow, home to one type of settler after another and home to an endless amount of heartache.

The first known settlers of the land that was to become Oklahoma were known as the "Mound Builders" or the "Clovis" culture. This time period isn't known exactly, but is thought to be somewhere between 500 and 1300 A.D., some 400 or more years before the Osage and Cherokee fought with each other and the United States government. The Osage eventually struck oil and became the richest people in the country per capita in the country. The Spanish Explorer Coronado actually toured the land that would become Oklahoma during his search for the "Lost City of Gold" and later the land was bought as part of the Louisiana Purchase in 1803.

In 1820 the land became what most people think of when they think of Oklahoma when the five civilized tribes were brutally relocated. What most don't realize is that there was a serious period of uncertainty about the Oklahoma land after the Civil War with the "golden age of Indian territory" and the "age of the Cowboy" not running the period alone. The area was being considered as being an offering to the African-American slaves freed after the war, but was instead offered to everyone by way of six land runs. Soon, every nationality and ethnicity was lining up around the borders of the territory in hopes of staking a claim.

Settlers from the Slavic nations, Germany, Poland, and Ireland lined up for the opportunity to be a land owner. African-American settlers responded to pamphlets advertising a "black paradise" and settled the towns of Arcadia, Boley, Langston, and Taft. Being gunfighters, farmers, and cowboys these African-American settlers impressed their Indian neighbors and became endearingly known as "Buffalo Soldiers". Eventually, the original Oklahoma Territory had around a 10% African-American population with the rights to vote and study being promised.

As statehood loomed for Oklahoma the Five Civilized Tribes tried to pass a movement to have two states formed, one being Oklahoma and the other being an Indian state referred to as "Sequoyah". However, this movement failed and the tribes decided to support the state instead of fighting for an exclusive territory.

The United States was still a growing and youthful nation in 1895 and was under the guidance of Grover Cleveland for the second time, though his terms were not successive. The "frontier" of the west was announced as closed and settled, while the Battle of Wounded Knee was five years in the nation's memory as the last of the Indian Wars ended after Sitting Bull's death led to the end of the Sioux. Across the world the diesel engine was invented in 1892 by a German Engineer named Rudolf Diesel and in 1893 women were allowed to vote for the first time by the New Zealand Government. Just as Oklahomans were discussing their first football excursion, a German physicist discovered the first X-Rays and a café in Paris showed the first motion pictures.

This game was not what we know today when we refer to football and it was certainly not as successful as players, coaches, and fans would hope. No, this game was pitiful by what would become Oklahoma Football's standards. If the game were played today the talk radio phone lines would be lit up endlessly. Nobody would be walking away from this game with their heads held high, but nobody was ready to give up on the game either.

Sources

1. Oklahoma Kickoff by Harold Keith
2. The Daily Oklahoman Archives
3. Rites of Autumn: The Story of College Football by Richard Whittingham