1954 Orange Bowl | |||||||||||||||||||
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Date | January 1, 1954 | ||||||||||||||||||
Season | 1953 | ||||||||||||||||||
Stadium | Orange Bowl | ||||||||||||||||||
Location | Miami, Florida | ||||||||||||||||||
Favorite | Maryland −7 | ||||||||||||||||||
Attendance | 68,640 | ||||||||||||||||||
Payout | US$121,308 | ||||||||||||||||||
United States TV coverage | |||||||||||||||||||
Network | CBS | ||||||||||||||||||
Announcers | Red Barber | ||||||||||||||||||
The 1954 Orange Bowl was a postseason American college football bowl game between the first-ranked Maryland Terrapins and the fourth-ranked Oklahoma Sooners. It was the twentieth edition of the Orange Bowl and took place at the Orange Bowl stadium in Miami, Florida on January 1, 1954.
The game was the first Orange Bowl to feature tie-ins between the Big Seven Conference and the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) champions. It was the first-ever meeting of the two teams. Maryland and Oklahoma were head coached by former colleagues Jim Tatum and Bud Wilkinson, respectively, who had previously coached together at the United States Navy's Iowa Pre-Flight School and the University of Oklahoma.
The game was the first postseason bowl game in which the players were required to play on both the offense and defense. This was a result of the NCAA's newly instituted "one-platoon" rules that limited player substitutions. It also featured the Orange Bowl's first conference tie-in between the Big Seven and the ACC.
Maryland was helmed by seventh-year head coach Jim Tatum. To that point, he had compiled a record of 56–11–3. Before that, he spent one year as the Oklahoma head coach in 1946, where Bud Wilkinson had served as his assistant coach. The team was ranked first in the nation in the final rankings of both the Associated Press (AP) Poll and the United Press Coaches' Poll. Maryland had finished the regular season with a perfect 10–0 record with the narrowest win being a 20–6 victory over Don Faurot's Missouri. They also recorded wins over 11th-ranked Mississippi, 38–0, and 11th-ranked Alabama, 21–0. Tatum said, "this is the greatest team I ever coached."