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Research dossier · General Reference

1996 Oklahoma State Cowboys football team

college football season

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionFeb 20, 2026
Entity authorityQ4591595 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 1996 Oklahoma State Cowboys football team represented Oklahoma State University as a member of the newly-formed Big 12 Conference during the 1996 NCAA Division I-A football season. Led by second-year head coach Bob Simmons, the Cowboys compiled an overall record of 5–6 with a mark of 2–6 in conference play, placing fifth in the Big 12's South Division. Oklahoma State played home games at Lewis Field in Stillwater, Oklahoma.

The Cowboys' victory against Southwest Missouri State in the season opener was NCAA Division I college football's first ever regular season game to finish in overtime.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1996 Oklahoma State Cowboys football team” as college football season. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1996—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Oklahoma, State and Cowboys can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the general reference register because the source frames it as college football season. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 20, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4591595. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1996.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “1996 Oklahoma State Cowboys football team”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 1996 Oklahoma State Cowboys football team primary sources, 1996 Oklahoma State Cowboys football team archive and Oklahoma research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1996 Oklahoma State Cowboys football team”?
  2. Which cited source is closest to the event, object or claim?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1996 Oklahoma State Cowboys football team” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.