The 1980 Orange Bowl was the 46th

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of the

college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...

bowl game In North America, a bowl game is one of a number of post-season college football games that are primarily played by teams belonging to the NCAA's Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). For most of its history, the Division I Bowl Subdivis ...

, played at the

Orange Bowl The Orange Bowl is an annual American college football bowl game played in the Miami metropolitan area. It has been played annually since January 1, 1935, making it, along with the Sugar Bowl and the Sun Bowl, the second-oldest bowl game in th ...

Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

, on Tuesday, January 1. Part of the 1979–80 bowl game season, it matched the fourth-ranked

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

Florida State Seminoles The Florida State Seminoles are the athletic teams representing Florida State University located in Tallahassee, Florida. They compete as a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I level (Football Bowl Subdivis ...

and the #5

Oklahoma Sooners The Oklahoma Sooners are the athletic teams that represent the University of Oklahoma, located in Norman. The 19 men's and women's varsity teams are called the "Sooners", a reference to a nickname given to the early participants in the Land Run ...

of the

Big Eight Conference The Big Eight Conference was a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA)-affiliated Division I-A college athletic association that sponsored football. It was formed in January 1907 as the Missouri Valley Intercollegiate Athletic Associatio ...

. Favored Oklahoma overcame an early deficit and won 24–7.

Teams

Florida State

This was Florida State's first major bowl

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as they attempted to complete a perfect undefeated season; they were on a fifteen-game win streak, which began in October

1978 Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of Republican People's Party, CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd go ...

. Their most recent bowl was two years earlier.

Oklahoma

The Sooners' only loss was to

Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...

in mid-October; they were champions of the

for the seventh straight year. Oklahoma was appearing in their eleventh Orange Bowl, the third of four consecutive.

Game summary

Mike Whiting gave the Seminoles a lead with his touchdown run, but that was their only score of the night. A fumbled field goal snap, three turnovers, over 100 yards of rushing by quarterback

J. C. Watts Julius Caesar Watts Jr. (born November 18, 1957) is an American politician, clergyman, and athlete. Watts was a college football quarterback for the Oklahoma Sooners and later played professionally in the Canadian Football League. He served in t ...

and halfback

Billy Sims Billy Ray Sims (born September 18, 1955) is a former American college and professional football player who was a running back in the National Football League (NFL) for five seasons during the 1980s. Sims played college football for the Universi ...

, and 24 unanswered points by Oklahoma doomed the Seminoles. It all started with a Watts run for a touchdown in the second quarter to tie the game at seven. After the kickoff, the Seminoles turned the ball over on an interception, giving the ball back to Oklahoma. Stanley Wilson then scored a touchdown run to make it 14–7. Mike Keeling added a field goal late in the quarter to give the Sooners a lead at halftime. The second half scoring was limited to one Oklahoma touchdown from 22 yards out in the fourth quarter; Watts ran for twelve yards before pitching the ball to Sims, who took it the rest of the way for a lead, the final score. The Sooners ran for 411 yards on 59 carries, an average of nearly seven yards per attempt, while having twice as many total yards as the Seminoles. Free safety Bud Hebert (No. 33) had 3 interceptions in the game - a record that stands to this day.

Scoring

;First quarter: *Florida State – Mike Whiting 1-yard run (Dave Cappelen kick) ;Second quarter: *Oklahoma –

61-yard run (Mike Keeling kick) *Oklahoma – Stanley Wilson 5-yard run (Keeling kick) *Oklahoma – Keeling 24-yard field goal ;Third quarter: :''No scoring'' ;Fourth quarter: *Oklahoma –

22-yard run, lateral from Watts (Keeling kick) :

Statistics

: :

Aftermath

Oklahoma climbed to third in the final AP poll and Florida State fell to sixth. Both teams returned the following year, and

Oklahoma Oklahoma (; Choctaw language, Choctaw: ; chr, ᎣᎧᎳᎰᎹ, ''Okalahoma'' ) is a U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States, bordered by Texas on the south and west, Kansas on the nor ...

won by a point.

References

{{Oklahoma Sooners bowl game navbox

Orange Bowl Florida State Seminoles football bowl games Oklahoma Sooners football bowl games January 1980 sports events in the United States