I WAS HERE WHEN: The Oranges Flew

IT was the 1967 football season, and expectations weren't high for the Oklahoma Sooners.

After going 6-4 the prior season, the team was dealt a major blow by the sudden loss of head coach Jim Mackenzie. Mackenzie suffered a heart attack in the spring after his first season at Oklahoma, leaving OU reeling as it prepared for the fall.

The challenge of guiding the Sooners fell to Chuck Fairbanks, who had been promoted to offensive coordinator just months prior. He was only 33 years old.

Q&A with OU Alum Sandy Kinney ('69, '70)

Q: What do you remember about the Oklahoma-Kansas game in 1967?

A: It was a really cold day, and I can remember that because I have a picture from the game where my dad and I were wearing heavy clothes. It was Dad's Weekend which meant a lot of dads came in on Friday and left after the game on Saturday. The game was at 1:30 in the afternoon. All of our games were in the afternoon because we didn't have lights in the stadium... I don't remember a lot about the individual plays of the game, but I remember when it got toward the end and we were behind, and we had been doing so well that season. We weren't supposed to do well at all. Our coach had died in the spring or summer, and no one thought we were going to be good, and we just kept winning game after game. We had only lost one. We came to this game and Kansas pulled away. So Kansas is ahead 10-0, and we start scoring. This is like the last two minutes of the game. And the oranges just started flying.

Q: How did people get oranges into the stadium?

A: I spoke to the grandson of the man who was the secretary of the Board of Regents at the time. He told his grandson that he had received a telephone call several days prior to the game asking if it would be okay to sell oranges outside the stadium, and he said yes, because he thought that was a great idea. There would be fruit for the people coming to the game. It never occurred to him that the oranges were going to be thrown onto the field. Once we started scoring the oranges were just flying all over the field and they had to stop the play and get the oranges off, and I remember being worried that we were going to get a penalty.

Q: As a student during this game in 1967, what would you tell OU students now about going to games?

A: I would tell them to enjoy every minute because it really is a carefree time to be at a football game and just having fun with your friends. If there are some memorable moments and you happen to snap them on your iPhone, don't erase those pictures later when you need more space. Try to find a way to preserve them, because it's a lot of fun to look back after almost 50 years and see a picture from one of those fun times.

Q: You and your husband are still season ticket holders. What do you enjoy about thegames?

A: It's definitely the whole game experience. We come to the Sooner Club tailgate before the games, we meet friends and we make a whole day of it regardless of what time the game is. It's a whole experience. The game itself is obviously the highlight, but we love coming to the games, seeing everything that goes on the video board. We try to get to our seats at least an hour before the game so that we can see and hear everything going on, on the screen, on the field—it's just a lot of fun.

Oklahoma fans were no strangers to success after watching legendary head coach Bud Wilkinson lead their team to 145 wins and only 29 losses from 1947 to 1963. But a recent slump had left the Sooners even at 15-15-1 since Wilkinson's retirement. The task in front of Fairbanks was tall.

The start to the season was auspicious—Oklahoma outscored its first two opponents by a combined margin of 56-0 in Memorial Stadium. The Sooners carried a 2-0 mark into the vaunted Cotton Bowl with the Red River Shootout as its backdrop.

A loss, 7-9, at the hands of border rival Texas would set the team back. But oh, how they responded.

A win. Then another, and another, and another. Suddenly Oklahoma was soaring in the college football world, ranked No. 7 nationally and boasting a record of 6-1 on the season. The Sooners were undefeated in Big Eight play with victories over Kansas State, Missouri, Iowa State and No. 9 Colorado under their belts.

The fan base was flying high, expectations were skyrocketing...and then came Kansas.

Vendors outside the stadium had been given permission to sell oranges that day, and the fruit stuffed the pockets of fans and students around the field. Of course, the point of the oranges was never to provide a healthy snack, as administrators might have thought. With a win, OU would be on the fast track to the Orange Bowl in sunny Florida.

The win, however, was not coming easy. The Jayhawks were hanging tougher with Oklahoma than any other team—save for Texas—had managed to do. KU leapt out to a 10-0 lead and hung on for the entire game. As the contest moved deep into the fourth quarter, the situation became dire for the Sooners as a crowd of over 57,000 in Memorial Stadium looked on.

Then: one touchdown...and suddenly, another! With the final minutes ticking off the clock, the crowd was on its feet as Oklahoma took a 14-10 lead.

That was when the oranges began to fly.

Fans in the stadium that day can still recall the oranges peppering the field as the referees blew their whistles, stopping game play so the fruit could be cleared from the playing surface. Some feared OU would be penalized, but the game went on. Just seconds later, the victory was sealed for Oklahoma.

The oranges proved to be prophetic. OU won consecutive rivalry games against Nebraska (21-14) and Oklahoma State (38-14) to capture the Big Eight title with a perfect mark of 7-0-0 in conference play.

The wins also secured a spot for No. 3 Oklahoma in the Miami Orange Bowl on New Year's Day. In yet another tight contest, Fairbanks' fearless Sooners would topple the No. 2 Tennessee Volunteers by a margin of 26-24 to finish with a near-perfect season of 10-1.

From their victories on the field to a team that had overcome incredible tragedy, it was truly a season for the unexpected.

University of Oklahoma Athletics

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