The single-game rushing record that last week took 15 years to break has been broken once again.
Oklahoma’s Samaje Perine rushed for 427 yards and five touchdowns on 34 carries against Kansas on Saturday, breaking the record of 408 yards set just last week by Wisconsin’s Melvin Gordon.
TCU’s LaDanian Tomlinson set the original record of 406 against UTEP in 1999.
Perine, a freshman, made and surpassed the record on a 42-yard scamper early in the fourth quarter. The Sooners called timeout, got the game ball and celebrated the accomplishment on the field.
Perine was then taken out of the game.
“I really didn’t have [the record] at the forefront of my mind,” Perine said in the postgame television interview with Fox Sports 1. “I just went out there, played the game and we did a really good job up front and on the perimeter with our blocking. And, you know, it just so happens that I came up with the record.”
While many were in awe of Gordon’s performance last week, Perine’s was perhaps a little anticlimactic because of the competition.
Gordon, who achieved the record on 25 carries in three quarters, did so against a ranked Nebraska team with a top-20 rushing defense in the heat of a Big Ten West Division race.
Perine’s record, while still impressive, was set on a rainy day against a Kansas team that had the 84th-best rushing defense and had won just two Big 12 Conference games in the past three seasons.
That said, Tomlinson’s record came against a 5-7 UTEP team that finished the season ranked 100th nationally against the run.
Perine came into the contest ranked 25th nationally in rushing with just over 1,000 yards. He was actually coming off a 213-yard performance against Texas Tech last week.
The 400-yard game was just his fourth triple-digit rushing performance of the season.
“We knew it was going to be a running day,” Perine said. “With this rain, we just had to do what we had to do and we came out fired up about it. And it was just a great day to run the ball.’
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