The Growth of Oklahoma Sooner Sports

In December, 1891, a young student of Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts was fulfilling a classroom assignment to create a sport to play indoors during the harsh winter months. The first true game of this student's creation took place at a YMCA and featured 18 men. The young student, James Naismith, developed four fundamental rules for the game with his Professor, Luther Gulick.

• No running with the ball.
• No tackling or rough body contact.
• A horizontal goal above player's heads.
• Freedom of any player to obtain the ball and score at any time.

A young unnamed Janitor put the final touches on the name given to the new game by helping Naismith find a container to throw the ball in. First, he asked for two boxes 18 inches in diameter, but the janitor could only find two peach baskets that were approximately 15 inches in diameter. James then hung them from the lower area of the balcony, selected teams, outlined the rules, and displayed his game for his professor. It is unclear what the Professor thought or if that game would have been entertaining at all. However, the game evolved over time and became one of the most popular games across the world.

The winter following Oklahoma's 1900 football season a young Professor, Dr. Lawrence Northcote Upjohn, came from Michigan to head the Anatomy and Physical Culture classes. Upjohn organized a game in the gymnasium at the same rock building in downtown Norman where Oklahoma held classes in 1892, the University's first year. Harold Keith outlined the first contact with this game for three football players:

Three of Professor Parrington's football players, Lum Roberts, Oscar Johnson and John McCartney, decided to give the new game a try. However instead of dribbling the unfamiliar round ball as the rules required, they reverted to football habit, thrusting it under one arm and stiff-arming the other thinly-clad gymnasium students out of their paths. Apprehensive lest the trio reduce the enrollment in the physical education school, Doctor Upjohn had to demand that the ball be bounced and not carried.

"Aw, I don't care anything about this game anyhow," Johnson said, as they later walked from the building.

"Nor I," seconded Roberts.

"I quit too," said McCartney.

And so the inevitable label as Oklahoma University of a football school began. The year 1900 would prove to be the final season of Vernon Parrington's tenure as Oklahoma Head Coach, though he would continue teaching until the political shakeup in 1908. Vernon Parrington ended his career as Oklahoma's first successful football coach with a record of 9-2-1, a winning percentage of .818. Oklahoma would begin a four-year period of uncertainty at the top of the program, but interest would certainly never wane. Oklahomans had a new passion for the pigskin.

Sources

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