Oklahoma Drill nearing its end
Berry Tramel
Oklahoman
0:40
16:51
Lincoln Riley remembers the Oklahoma Drill from his playing days in the 1990s at Muleshoe High School in west Texas.
“Vivid memories of it,” Riley said. “That was always a fun day and we did it quite a bit actually.
“Always very competitive and was kinda that badge of honor, that toughness drill that everybody looked forward to, that everybody got fired up about.”
The Oklahoma Drill doesn’t fire up much of anyone anymore. In fact, the NCAA is on the verge of banning the iconic practice-field maneuver.
In the Tuesday ScissorTales, we look at how much Avery Anderson's return to OSU basketball could mean for Mike Boynton's Cowboys, and we analyze a Branch Rickey scouting report on Oklahoman Ralph Terry from 1953. But we start with the iconic Oklahoma Drill.
The NCAA’s football oversight committee has recommended to the Division I Council a variety of safety measures that include banning straight-line contact like the Oklahoma Drill. Other suggestions are reducing the number of contact practices in preseason from 21 to 18, requiring at least seven padless practices during the preseason, limiting full contact to no more than 75 minutes for any practice, no more than two consecutive days of full-contact practice and no more than two scrimmages in preseason. The modifications are a result of a study that showed players suffer more concussions during preseason practices than in games.
“Obviously, there's gonna be a lot of things as coaches, all of us are gonna have to circle back and really reevaluate our drills and make sure we're in compliance,” Riley said. “And I would say that's not new for us. We've done that for a while. The trend here for the last several years has been, what drills do you have to have? What drills are unnecessarily potentially putting a player at risk?”
Truth is, the Oklahoma Drill has been in decline. The National Football League banned it in 2019, and fewer than ever high school and college teams use it.
The Oklahoma Drill became famous under Bud Wilkinson. He installed it with the Sooners in the late 1940s. The Oklahoma Drill has developed many variations. But the general root of the drill pits a blocker against a defender in a confined space, with tackling dummies serving as the borders. A quarterback hands off to a running back, who runs between the tackling dummies as the defender attempts to drive through the blocker and make a tackle.
"They were doing it when I got there," former Sooner lineman J.D. Roberts, who won the Outland Trophy in 1953 and eventually coached the New Orleans Saints in the 1970s, told The Oklahoman in 2010. "We didn't call it the Oklahoma Drill then. It was just the one-on-one drill. There was no tiptoeing around with it. We enjoyed it."
Those Sooners became known for their toughness, technique and tenacity. Wilkinson’s teams produced winning streaks of 31 games (1948-50) and 47 games (1953-57), and soon it was being copied coast to coast.
The drill eventually became a staple of football practices on every level, traditionally run on the first day of contact workouts and with the entire team gathered round, to increase emotion and energy.
For decades, OU has taken pride that its name is associated with the drill; even in the superiority-complexed Southeastern Conference, teams give Wilkinson his due, calling it the Oklahoma Drill.
When Bob Stoops was hired at OU 21½ years ago, he reinstated the Oklahoma Drill into Sooner workouts. As recently as a decade ago, it was a constant at OU practices.
In the 2013 Cincinnati Bengals training camp, featured on HBO’s Hard Knocks series, tight end and OU alum Jermaine Gresham famously knocked down 303-pound nose guard Geno Atkins in the Oklahoma Drill, and the drill’s fame grew to a younger generation.
But as concussion concerns mounted in football, and player safety became paramount, the drill fell out of favor.
“I think it’s a bigger deal to fans than it is to coaches,” said Central Oklahoma coach Nick Bobeck. “It’s something you may do one time per camp, one time in spring football. It’s not a big change (to ban it). The practice restrictions aren’t going to be a big change, either. Most people are already doing that, because people are so concerned about players’ well-being.”
On the high school level, the Oklahoma Drill has been diminished by safety awareness and declining numbers. With fewer players out for football, depth is always a concern.
Mount St. Mary coach Willis Alexander said that when he was coaching at Douglass, the Trojans used an Oklahoma Drill version called “tornado,” with three levels of blocker/defender matchups. But those days are gone.
“Just practice habits have changed a lot over time,” Alexander said. “Things are just different. We want to have physical preparation, tough practices, but you have to be very mindful how physical your practices can be.
“Everything we do is game-related. Any type of drill we do, if they don’t do it in the game, they don’t need to practice it.”
Of course, every drill involving linemen in full contact is an Oklahoma Drill, minus the ballcarrier, so physicality remains at the core of most football practices. That’s why the limits on full-contact practices.
“We haven't done the drill here, honestly, since I've been here,” said Riley, who came to OU in 2015 and became head coach in 2017. “At times, we've done versions of it that are safer, less high-speed contact. So we've done some things that get you a similar result without maybe quite as much risk involved.
“I think our drills have been tailored a lot. I don't think we'll actually have to change a whole lot with these new regulations coming out, but times certainly have changed from the days back in Muleshoe.”
