Game of the Century marked the change in college sports for Black athletes
It seems bizarre to imagine a time when college sports did not include Black athletes. In my lifetime, I cannot remember a time when my team, the Oklahoma Sooners, did not have significant football players who were Black.
The first I remember as a young fan was the outstanding nose guard, Granville Liggins, who starred in the 1968 Orange Bowl victory over Tennessee – the first television broadcast of an OU game that I can remember watching.
(At the time Tennessee had not integrated its football team. Their first Black football player came a year after the Vols lost that night to Liggins and the Sooners 26-24. I did not realize OU was playing against an all-white team when I watched the game in our living room. I don’t believe I, at age 9, knew the significance of that).
Dave: Huskers bring a mobile QB to town to test the Sooners D
At the tailgate before the Western Carolina game, someone asked the group what did we expect to learn from the game that night.
My good buddy Mike said, “If we learn anything at all, it won’t be good.”
And he was absolutely right. There really is nothing to be learned from a 76-0 beat down in a really unfair contest. The only thing we could have learned would have been really bad. That might have been the worst team to visit Owen Field in the past 25 years.