Portal:Oklahoma/Selected article
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The Oklahoma Sooners football program is a college football team that represents the University of Oklahoma (OU). The team is currently a member of the Big 12 Conference, which is a Division I Bowl Subdivision (formerly Division I-A) of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). The program began in 1895 and is winningest program of the modern era (post World War II) with 524 wins and a winning percentage of .761 since 1945. The program has seven national championships, 40 conference championships, 142 All-Americans, and four Heisman Trophy winners. In addition, the school has had five coaches and 17 players inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame and holds the record for the longest winning streak in Division I-BS history with 47 straight victories. The team is currently coached by Bob Stoops and home games are played at the Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman, Oklahoma.
The Comanche are a Native American group whose historical range (the Comancheria) consisted of present-day Eastern New Mexico, Southern Colorado, Southern Kansas, all of Oklahoma, and most of Northern and Southern Texas. There might once have been as many as 20,000 Comanches. Today, the Comanche Nation consists of approximately 10,000 members, about half of whom live in Oklahoma (centered at Lawton), with the remainder concentrated in Texas, California, and New Mexico.
There are various accounts of the origin of the name Comanche. Perhaps the most widely accepted is that it derives from Komantcia, a Spanish corruption of "Kohmahts", the Ute name for the people. "Kohmahts" is variously translated as "enemy", "those who want to fight (us)", "those who are against us", or "strangers". Alternatively the name may come from the Spanish camino ancho, meaning "wide trail". Early French and American explorers knew the Comanche as Padouca (or Paducah), their Siouan name. The Comanches' own preferred name is Numunuu, meaning "the People".
Jacobus Franciscus "Jim" Thorpe (Sac and Fox Nation: Wa-Tho-Huk) (May 28, 1887 – March 28, 1953) is considered one of the most versatile athletes in modern sports. He won Olympic gold medals in the pentathlon and decathlon, starred in college and professional football, played Major League Baseball and also had a career in basketball. He subsequently lost his Olympic titles when it was found he had played two seasons of minor league baseball prior to competing in the games (thus violating the amateur status rules). In 1983, thirty years after his death, his medals were restored.
The University of Oklahoma, often called OU or Oklahoma, is a coeducational public research university located in the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The university was founded in 1890. It currently enrolls 30,447 students (with a vast majority of those located at its main campus in Norman, Oklahoma), has over 2,000 full-time faculty members, and offers 153 baccalaureate programs, 152 master's programs, 75 doctorates, 20 majors at the first professional level, and 18 graduate certificates. David Boren is the president of OU, a position he accepted in 1994.
The Princeton Review recently named OU as one of its "Best Value" colleges. OU is also number one per capita among public universities in the number of National Merit Scholars enrolled. and in the top five among all public universities in the graduation of Rhodes Scholars. OU is home to the Neustadt International Prize for Literature, considered to be second in prestige only to the Nobel Prize and often referred to as the "American Nobel."
