Wylie G. Woodruff, an All American player from the University of Pennsylvania came to Kansas to coach football in the fall of 1897.

Woodruff was released at the end of the 1898 season and Kansas hired Fielding H. Yost from the University of Nebraska.

While at Michigan, he helped Yost develop the famous "Point-a-Minute" teams built around halfback Willie Heston.

[2] Owen got his first exposure to the Oklahoma football team while head coach at Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas.

He stepped in and immediately turned the fledgling team around, giving Oklahoma its very first win over the rival Texas Longhorns.

Early in Stratton D. Brooks's tenure as president of the University of Oklahoma, Owen was fired by the state legislature.

They believed his salary of $3,500 (equivalent to $105,414 in 2023) was far too great for an athletics coach and used the loss of his arm as an excuse for dismissal.

Due to costs involved in travel, Owen's teams would regularly go out on long, grueling road trips.

Largely because of their accomplishments during Owen's era as head coach, the Oklahoma Sooners have scored the most points of any team in college football history.

Along with Bud Wilkinson, Barry Switzer and Bob Stoops, he is one of four coaches to win over 100 games at Oklahoma.

[8] In 1910, Owen became an initiated member of the Delta Epsilon chapter of Sigma Nu at the University of Oklahoma.

[9] Owen had been living in the Sigma Nu chapter house's basement at 526 South University Boulevard during this time.