by Roger Moore

Created on: May 07, 2009   Last Updated: May 09, 2009

Major League Baseball's New York Yankees own 26 championships.

In the NHL, the Montreal Canadiens have raised the Stanley Cup 24 times.

The Boston Celtics have won the NBA's most titles, 18.

When it comes to professional sports and collegiate athletics, no program has won more championships than Oklahoma State University wrestling. The orange-and-black-clad Cowboys have won 34 NCAA Division I titles. No. 2 on the list of NCAA champions is the University of Southern California and its 26 men's outdoor track and field first place finishes.

Edward Clark Gallagher, by most considered the father of American folk-style wrestling, became coach of the Cowboys in 1916, a year after the program was founded. Over the next 25 years he brought 11 NCAA team titles to Stillwater, Okla., and compiled an incredible 136-5-4 dual record. Thirty seven times his athletes won individual titles.

The program did not miss a beat when Art Griffith took over the reins in 1941. Griffith's teams won eight NCAA titles and won 78 of 89 dual meets.

In 1957 it was Myron Roderick's turn. As a competitor for Griffith, Roderick, a stocky fireball of energy, won three individual titles and won 42 of his 44 collegiate matches. Roderick's teams went 140-10-7 in duals and won NCAA titles seven times.

Tommy Chesbro, a laid-back coach with a wealth of technical wrestling knowledge, became head coach in 1970, a year after leading C. E. Donart High School in Stillwater to a state title.

Chesbro's squads compiled a 227-26 dual mark and won a national championship in 1971. The Cowboys, whose historical rivals had been the University of Oklahoma and Iowa State University, found a new foe in Dan Gable and the University of Iowa during Chesbro's tenure.

The Hawkeyes would dominate the collegiate landscape for much of the next three decades, winning 21 of their 23 overall titles Iowa won back-to-back championships in 2008 and 2009 from 1975 to 2000.

Chesbro's run would end in 1984 and Joe Seay, who turned California-Bakersfield into a Division II powerhouse, became leader of a program in search of its first championship in over a decade.

After four straight top four finishes at the NCAA Tournament, Seay's 1989 team earned the top prize. They would repeat the feat a year later and finish second in 1991 before NCAA violations forced the program to relieve Seay of his duties as coach.

A member of the 1989 team, John Smith, was in the middle of an unprecedented international run of success that

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