1. Charles Burnham "Bud" Wilkinson was an American football player, coach, broadcaster, and politician.
28 Facts About Bud Wilkinson
1. 2.
Bud Wilkinson returned to coaching in 1978, as head coach of the St Louis Cardinals of the National Football League for two seasons.
3.
Bud Wilkinson was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1969.
4.
Bud Wilkinson's mother died when he was seven, and his father sent him to the Shattuck School in Faribault, Minnesota, where he excelled in five sports and graduated in 1933.
5.
Bud Wilkinson enrolled at the University of Minnesota, where, as a guard and quarterback for head coach Bernie Bierman, Wilkinson helped lead the Golden Gophers to three consecutive national championships from 1934 to 1936.
6.
Bud Wilkinson played ice hockey for the University of Minnesota.
7.
Bud Wilkinson was drafted in the third round of the 1937 NFL Draft by the Packers but never played.
8.
Bud Wilkinson briefly worked for his father's mortgage company, then he became an assistant coach at Syracuse University and later at his alma mater, Minnesota.
9.
The 31-year-old Bud Wilkinson was named head football coach and athletic director of the Sooners.
10.
Ultimately, Bud Wilkinson became one of the most celebrated college coaches of all time.
11.
Twice Minnesota attempted to hire him away from Oklahoma, in 1950 and 1953, but both times Bud Wilkinson rebuffed his alma mater.
12.
Bud Wilkinson got OU football placed on major NCAA probation twice in a five-year span for illegally paying players out of a $125,000 slush fund for a decade and a half after World War II ended.
13.
Bud Wilkinson's teams went 12 consecutive seasons without a loss in conference play, a streak which has never been seriously threatened.
14.
Bud Wilkinson did not suffer his first conference loss until 1959 against Nebraska, his 79th conference game.
15.
Bud Wilkinson has since been passed by Barry Switzer and Bob Stoops.
16.
Bud Wilkinson became the first football coach to host his own television show.
17.
Bud Wilkinson designed 11 floor exercises for schoolchildren that were incorporated into the song "Chicken Fat", the theme song for President John F Kennedy's youth fitness program, which was widely used in school gymnasiums across the country in the 1960s and 1970s.
18.
In February, 1964, Wilkinson announced that he would enter a special election to replace his friend, the late Robert S Kerr, as US Senator from Oklahoma.
19.
Bud Wilkinson had already resigned his position as head coach of the Oklahoma University Sooners.
20.
Easily winning the Republican primary, Wilkinson became the Republican nominee for the US Senate in 1964, at which point he legally changed his first name to Bud, but narrowly lost to Democrat Fred R Harris, then a State Senator in Oklahoma.
21.
Bud Wilkinson entertained seeking the other Oklahoma US Senate seat in 1968, but he did not run, and the position went to former Governor Henry Bellmon, a Republican.
22.
In 1965, Bud Wilkinson joined ABC Sports as their lead color commentator on college football telecasts, teaming with Chris Schenkel and, later, Keith Jackson.
23.
Bud Wilkinson was the color analyst for four of the greatest games in college football history, each commonly referred to as a "Game of the Century": Notre Dame vs Michigan State in 1966, UCLA vs USC in 1967, Texas vs Arkansas in 1969, and Nebraska vs Oklahoma in 1971.
24.
Bud Wilkinson was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1969.
25.
In 1978, Bud Wilkinson returned to coaching with the St Louis Cardinals of the NFL.
26.
Bud Wilkinson suffered a series of minor strokes and, on February 9,1994, he died of congestive heart failure in St Louis at the age of 77.
27.
Bud Wilkinson is interred at Oak Grove Cemetery in St Louis, Missouri.
28.
Bud Wilkinson was married to the former Mary Schifflet in 1938, with whom he had two sons, Pat and Jay.