Granville Liggins – Soonerguys

Game of the Century marked the change in college sports for Black athletes

Published on September 16, 2021 by Mike

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).

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Why the Tennessee game means so much to me

Published on September 12, 2014 by admin

The first televised Oklahoma football game I ever paid attention to was the last time the Sooners played Tennessee.

It was January 1, 1968, when Oklahoma played No. 2 Tennessee in the Orange Bowl.

That game marked the conclusion of a Cinderella 1967 season for the Sooners. It also was my first “official” season as a rabid Sooner football fan.

The game which allowed Oklahoma to play Tennessee was the Big 8 clash with the Kansas Jayhawks in Norman on November 18, 1967. It was the first OU football game I remember attending in person. A cold front had come through days before that was so chilling that I gave up at halftime of our Velma-Alma high school playoff game the night before for the warm confines of home.

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