COWBOYS HISTORY LESSONS

What if Oklahoma A&M would have been part of the Big Six when it was formed in 1926?

Oklahoma A&M president Bradford Knapp attended the Missouri Valley Conference's annual meeting in 1925 and wired back to his school the news:

“We win great victory; future of A&M athletics assured; Aggies voted in Valley.”

Great victory? Absolutely. Oklahoma A&M athletics assured? Not at all.

Oklahoma State has a fabulous tradition of athletic success, but the Cowboys would have been in even better shape, especially in all-important football, had their conference history not been gutted by a three-decade odyssey.

A 1926 flap in the Missouri Valley led to six schools leaving the conference to form what became known as the Big Six.

Oklahoma A&M, which in 1957 would be renamed Oklahoma State, was not invited to come along with Oklahoma, Nebraska, Iowa State, Missouri, Kansas State and Kansas.

“A&M was left practically at the altar, with a single Valley football trophy and unfulfilled dreams,” wrote OSU historian Doris Dellinger.

For 30 years, prominent Cowboys like president Henry Bennett and athletic director Henry Iba worked to get A&M back into a conference with the schools most similar in size and mission and geography. It finally happened on June 1, 1957.

“We had to get in or die,” Iba told The Oklahoman in 1987. “If we hadn't made that move, I don't know what would have happened to Oklahoma State. I don't think we could have made it in athletics if we hadn't gotten into the Big Eight. The Missouri Valley was fine, but we wanted to be associated with schools like ours.”

Optimism abounded several times in Stillwater over the Cowboys joining what became the Big Six/Big Seven.

In 1940, when the University of Chicago left the Big Ten and Nebraska was mentioned as a replacement, A&M was thought to be a Big Six candidate.

In 1947, when Colorado was added and the league became the Big Seven, Iba hoped the Cowboys would be admitted too, giving the league an even number of teams.

In 1949, when Iba was invited to Big Seven spring meetings, optimism reigned. But the vote went 5-2 against the Cowboys.

“It rankled,” Dellinger wrote. “It had been a year in which A&M's powerful varsities had genuinely overshadowed the Missouri Valley and even the Big Seven in sports across the board.”

Iba's basketball team had just reached the 1949 NCAA championship game, to go with 1945 and 1946 national championships. Art Griffith's squad had just won A&M's 16th NCAA wrestling championship in 22 seasons. And Jim Lookabaugh's football team was coming off a 6-4, Delta Bowl season that included a 19-15 Bedlam loss to Bud Wilkinson's blossoming Sooners. And that was in the wake of Cotton Bowl and Sugar Bowl victories just a few years earlier.

Oklahoma A&M was one of the most successful athletic program in America.

Wrote The Daily Oklahoman's Hal Middlesworth: “The Big Seven should consider joining A&M, not A&M joining the Big Seven.”

Some of the 1926 flap is lost to history. Dellinger, in her book on OSU's athletic history, cites the football championship. The Missouri Valley became a 10-team league with A&M admittance, but teams played only eightgame schedules, and the Cowboys scheduled just four Valley games. When A&M went 3-0-1 — but lost all four non-conference games — and every other team lost at least one league, the Aggies were declared conference champion. That apparently bothered the veteran Valley schools.

Surely there were other issues. No Valley team played more than six conference games, and Kansas State played just four itself. But for whatever reason, A&M's bond with OU, Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa State and the Kansas schools was short-lived.

And how it cost Cowboy football.

A&M throughout the 1940s was at least the gridiron equal of any Big Six/ Big Seven program. But by 1957, when Iba's crusade finally was realized, the Cowboys were not potent.

The Big Eight invitation came only two weeks after Gov. Raymond Gary signed the legislation that renamed A&M Oklahoma State University.

“Thirty-two years of vigorous activity on the playing fields while quiet work and steely patience continued in meetings rooms would be rewarded at last,” wrote Dellinger said.

But the reward was slow coming.

The Missouri Valley had become an excellent basketball league over the years. Bradley, Creighton, Saint Louis, Wichita State. All had joined the Valley. Iba's battle royales against Ed Hickey and Saint Louis became one of America's greatest conference rivalries.

But football suffered in the Valley. Most seasons in the `40s and `50s, Missouri Valley consisted of only five teams, which meant four conference games.

The great Lookabaugh resigned after the 1949 season, and the Cowboys entered into a period of mediocrity. So-so records against meager schedules.

When OSU entered Big Eight play in 1960, it found a conference that was getting better. OU had dominated the league — Wilkinson didn't lose a conference game his first dozen years, 1947-58 — but by 1960 Missouri, Kansas and Colorado were solid, and Bob Devaney was just around the corner at Nebraska.

OSU football was not prepared. Iba had taken to scheduling football games based on revenue — lots of unreturned road games to Arkansas (annually) and other Southwest Conference opponents. The Cowboys went without a winning season between 1959 and 1972.

Worse yet, the basketball program had stumbled. Iba's 1958 team reached the NCAA Tournament as an independent, but in the Cowboys' first 12 seasons in the new conference, Iba won one title and had a league record of 67-101.

The Cowboys remained great in golf and wrestling. Baseball won the 1959 College World Series and always was competitive. But the bellcow sports suffered upon entry into the Big 12.

Had Oklahoma A&M entered the league a decade earlier, it would have been in much better shape to impact the Big Eight. Iba's teams would have stood toe-to-toe with Kansas. Football could have contended for the role of No. 2 in the league, behind only the Sooners.

OSU football today has become a source of pride. Under Mike Gundy, the Cowboys have been the Big 12's second-best program and one of the 12 or 15 best programs in the nation. But that was a status that required a long fight.

The Pat Jones era of the 1980s was outstanding, but otherwise, Cowboy football from 1950 through 2001 was mostly mediocre at best. Interest was moderate. Facilities waned.

People like Terry Don Phillips and Mike Holder and Boone Pickens finally said enough is enough, and Les Miles and Gundy changed the culture, and OSU football is a source of pride in Stillwater, much as it was in the 1940s. But other than that five-year Jones run, the Cowboys were mostly dormant for half a century.

All because they lost their conference footing and found it again at the most inopportune time. If Oklahoma A&M hadn't been left at the altar in 1926, or had been reunited a decade earlier than 1957, the Cowboys' history would be much more flush with success.