OMAHA, Neb. — A year ago, when LSU won its eighth Men’s College World Series title, many — including this very space — declared the Tigers as the greatest college baseball program of all time.
On Monday night, another SEC team — albeit a new one — was dogpiling. No one in their right hardball mind will ever try to sell the Oklahoma Sooners as being in the argument for greatest ever. But they are now indisputably the sneakiest-greatest college baseball program ever.
The Sooners won a deciding and very decisive MCWS finals Game 3 by a score of 13-2 — the same final score of their last college football national title 26 years ago — thanks to an inning-after-inning barrage of runs, and did so over the North Carolina Tar Heels, who now have a very solid case for the greatest program to never win it all.
In the 79th edition of the MCWS, the Sooners became only the 10th team to win three or more baseball national championships.
“I don’t worry about history, I think people know that about me, but if you say we made some, I’m not going to give it back,” said a chuckling Oklahoma head coach Skip Johnson, who finally won a national championship after 29 years as a Division I coach, including two decades as an assistant. “But what I do know is how hard these guys worked. How we all work. People don’t see that. Team meetings and talks and workouts. All the stuff that gets you to a place like tonight. Maybe people overlook you. If you have a good group, you don’t care about that. Because if you take care of your business and do it the right way, they can’t overlook you then.”
The Sooners have also spread their championship wealth, winning those three championships in three very different, very scattered decades and now, two conferences, this being their first as a member of the SEC. Oklahoma clinched the league’s seventh straight MCWS title and became the sixth different SEC team in that group.
“We’ve had teams in the finals, what, twice in four years?” Oklahoma shortstop Jaxon Willits said during the postgame celebration, referring to OU’s finals loss to Ole Miss in 2022, a Sooners team that was coached by Johnson, but was then still a member of the Big 12. Only two Sooners were on that roster and this one. His father, Reggie Willits, was an assistant coach on both. “How many other teams can say that? That they’ve been in the finals twice over that time.”
Willits is told one other, LSU, the SEC’s only repeat champ during that streak.
“Sounds pretty elite, doesn’t it?” Willits said.
In today’s parity party that is college baseball, yes, it is. And the road this team took to Omaha ran right over a line of elite programs.
The Ole Miss team that Oklahoma lost to in ’22 was considered to be one of the most unlikeliest champions in recent memory. The Rebels barely made it into the 64-team tournament that year and had to knock off a series of ranked teams to win it all, including Oklahoma.
But this Sooners team was also all but forgotten as the regular season ended, and with good reason. They finished the season by losing four straight weekend series in the conference, dropping them into a losing record within the league. Then they were bounced from the SEC tournament in one game by a shockingly disappointing LSU team that failed to make this year’s NCAA field of 64.
Then Oklahoma, saddled by one loss in the double-elimination opening round, came back to beat No. 2 Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Then it destroyed No. 15 Kansas in the Lawrence Super Regional by a combined score of 21-3. In Omaha, it vanquished No. 7 Alabama, No. 3 Georgia twice and ultimately No. 5 UNC, two games to one.
“There’s no damn question whether or not you’re the best when you got here by beating all the teams that everyone said were the best,” former Oklahoma head football coach Barry Switzer said in between hugs and confetti dumps. “If you beat all of them, and these guys did, then there can’t be any doubt can there?”
The first of Oklahoma’s three titles came in 1951, with a team that won its conference, then the Big Seven, and received an invitation to the second edition of the Series in Omaha. But athletic director and football coach Bud Wilkinson didn’t believe the team was good enough to be there and refused to pay for the trip until the university president intervened. The Sooners swept their way to the title, defeating heavily-favored Tennessee in the finals but never celebrated. Recalled outfielder-turned-actor Jim Antonio in 2008 in the documentary, “Road to Omaha”:
“We would’ve liked to have stayed and celebrated, but we didn’t have enough money left to get a hotel room,” Antonio said.
So, the champs loaded their trophy into their school bus and drove 500 miles back to Norman. The players finally received their championship rings in 2001, at least the ones who were still alive.
The second natty was earned 43 years later with a high-powered Sooners squad packed with All-Big Eight all-stars (shoutout to an all-time name, right-handed pitcher Bucky Buckles). They defeated archrival Texas to advance to Omaha and then swept their way through the Series, defeating a ridiculously loaded Georgia Tech team that included Nomar Garciaparra and Jason Varitek.
A big group of players from that team started rolling to Omaha the moment this year’s team clinched their finals spot last Wednesday. On Monday afternoon, members of OU’s 2010 MCWS team were showing their children the former location of Rosenblatt Stadium, where they shocked No. 1 South Carolina in the opener of the final series played at the ballpark where Sooners celebrated in ’51 and ’94.
“We are one of the best teams that no one gives enough credit to,” explained one of this weekend’s spectators, Tim Walton, the winning pitcher in ’94 against Georgia Tech and now a Women’s College World Series-winning softball coach at Florida. “But when so many former players come back, as we all have this week to watch this team, you get everyone in the same place and it’s a reminder that, ‘Hey, Sooners, we’re pretty dang good at this baseball thing, aren’t we?'”
They are. Even if we have allowed them to be overshadowed by Sooners football (somewhere Bud Wilkinson smiles), softball (winners of eight nattys) and, yes, that burnt orange team to the south, the one with six MCWS rings that is most definitely in that greatest-ever discussion.
But on Monday night in Omaha, so many Sooners football legends were in attendance, from current quarterback John Mateer to Switzer. And the Longhorns, bounced from Omaha in two games, were leading the “Eliminated Team 50% Off” sales in the souvenir stands adjacent to Charles Schwab Field, and they were the recipients of a round of hefty boos from the OU faithful as Adrian Rodriguez was named to the 2026 MCWS all-tournament team.
Also spotted in those souvenir stands, in an MCWS vintage tent, was a shirt featuring the 1994 team’s motto: 25 Guys Pulling on the Same Rope.
A full 32 years later, which honestly feels right on time for this sneakiest of programs, it was 35 guys. And with a sudden postseason starting rotation of true freshmen, backed by a lineup that hit more home runs over the past month than they hit over the first three, a lot of those guys were total unknowns to those of us outside of their locker room.
And they used their crimson and cream rope to close the generational gap between their three national title teams, towing them all together into a college baseball territory occupied by very few.
“Teams have two choices. You either split apart when things aren’t going well, or you come together when things aren’t going well,” said LJ Mercurius, who earned the win during his midgame relief appearance. “We came together. That’s how we had this dream season.”
