Wilkinson, Charles

▪ 1995

      ("BUD"), U.S. football coach (b. April 23, 1916, Minneapolis, Minn.—d. Feb. 9, 1994, St. Louis, Mo.), led the University of Oklahoma Sooners to three national football championships (1950, 1955, and 1956), turned out 32 all-American players, and established a National Collegiate Athletic Association record for 47 consecutive victories between 1953 and 1957. The incredible string of wins was broken by a 7-0 loss to Notre Dame, but the record was never bettered. Wilkinson, a star athlete at the University of Minnesota, played football on three national championship teams and earned three letters for that sport besides three more for hockey. After graduating (1937) with a B.A. in English and briefly working in banking, Wilkinson coached football at the Universities of Syracuse, N.Y., and Minnesota. During World War II he served in the navy as a hangar deck officer, and he also coached the Iowa Pre-Flight team. He joined Oklahoma in 1946 as assistant coach and was elevated to head coach the following year. As a result of his coaching success—an impressive record of 145 wins, 29 losses, and 4 ties at Oklahoma, Wilkinson drew large audiences of fellow coaches, who flocked to his clinics on the split-T offense. Wilkinson was inducted into the National Football Foundation College Football Hall of Fame and retired from college coaching in 1964. He later served as a sports commentator, head of the President's Council on Physical Fitness, and head coach of the National Football League's St. Louis Cardinals from 1978 to 1979.

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