Charles Burnham "Bud" Wilkinson (April 23, 1916 – February 9, 1994) was an American football player, coach, broadcaster, and politician. He served as the head football coach at the University of Oklahoma from 1947 to 1963, compiling a record of 145–29–4. His Oklahoma Sooners won three national championships (1950, 1955, and 1956) and 14 conference titles. Between 1953 and 1957, Wilkinson's Oklahoma squads won 47 straight games, a record that still stands at the highest level of college football. After retiring from coaching following the 1963 season, Wilkinson entered into politics and, in 1965, became a broadcaster with ABC Sports. He returned to coaching in 1978, helming the St. Louis Cardinals of the National Football League (NFL) for two seasons. Wilkinson was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame as a coach in 1969. Early life and playing career Wilkinson's mother died when he was seven, and his father sent him to the Shattuck School in Faribault, Minnesota, where he excelled in five sports and graduated in 1933. He enrolled at the University of Minnesota, where, as a guard and quarterback for head coach Bernie Bierman, Wilkinson helped lead the Golden Gophers to three consecutive national championships from 1934 to 1936. He also played ice hockey for the University of Minnesota. Following his graduation in 1937 with a degree in English, he led the College All-Stars to a 6–0 victory over the defending NFL champion Green Bay Packers in Chicago on August 31. Coaching career Wilkinson briefly worked for his father's mortgage company, then he became an assistant coach at Syracuse University and later at his alma mater, Minnesota. In 1943, he joined the U.S. Navy, where he was an assistant to Don Faurot with the Iowa Pre-Flight Seahawks football team. He served as a hangar deck officer on the . Following World War II, Jim Tatum, the new head coach at the University of Oklahoma, persuaded Wilkinson to join his staff in 1946. After one season in Norman, Tatum left the Sooners for the University of Maryland. The 31-year-old Wilkinson was named head football coach and athletic director of the Sooners. Head coach at Oklahoma In his first season as head coach in 1947, Wilkinson led Oklahoma to a 7–2–1 record and a share of the conference championship, the first of 13 consecutive Big Six/Seven/Eight Conference titles. Ultimately, Wilkinson became one of the most celebrated college coaches of