Sports Illustrated Changes Mind on OU Football 2016 Expectations
By Chip Rouse
The editors and writers at Sports Illustrated apparently have changed direction on what they think of the chances of OU football being one of the final four teams standing at the end of the 2016 college football season.
Everybody is entitled to change their opinion, certainly. What’s intriguing about the change of heart and vision regarding the expectations of the Sooners by those staffers at SI who cover college football and pull together the magazine’s annual College Football Preview issue is the disparity in the preseason power rankings between spring practice and now.
In case you were not aware, Sports Illustrated released its preseason College Football Top 25 along with its annual preview issue out this week. Oklahoma sits at No. 6 in the SI Top 25, two and three spots ahead of the teams the Sooners are scheduled to play in the first three weeks of the season.
“(Coach Bob) Stoops walks and talks with a lot of swagger, and his guys feed off it,” is an opposing coach’s view of the 2016 Sooners and included in the write up on Oklahoma in SI’s 2016 College Football Preview issue. “They think they’re the best, and they play like it.”
Only the Sooners’ “best” ostensibly is not good enough for those who cast the ballots for this year’s SI preseason top 25.
For those of us who are of the opinion – biased or not – that Oklahoma deserves more love than that shown by the smart folks at SI, it’s probably worth taking a momentary step back and putting all of this into perspective. Houston is No. 8 in the SI’s preseason Top 25, and Ohio State is at No. 9.
Everything is out there in front of the Sooners. All they have to do is take care of business against Houston in the season opener on Sept. 3, and hold home serve against visiting Ohio State two weeks later, and that should be enough to move Oklahoma up in the rankings. You would certainly think that wins over two teams ranked in the top 10, and that early in the season, would be enough of a stimulus to make things right with the SI pollsters.
The only problem is that SI does not put out weekly rankings. What SI does do, however, albeit on the SI.com website and not in the printed magazine, is put out what it calls it’s “Too-Early Top 25,” which it did back in May at the conclusion of football spring practice sessions.
In this year’s “Too Early Top 25 Power Rankings,” SI.com had the Sooners sitting at No. 1, followed by 2. Alabama, 3. Florida State, 4. Clemson and 5. Ohio State.
“(Bob) Stoops walks and talks with a lot of swagger, and his guys feed off it. They think they’re the best and they play like it.” —Sports Illustrated 2016 College Football Preview issue
Your guess is as good as mine as to what happened between May and now to drop the Sooners six spots in the SI preseason power rankings. The only reasonable explanation, as far as I can tell, is that two different groups within the SI organization are responsible for coming up with the two polls.
SI’s 2016 college preview issue has Alabama, Clemson, Florida State and Michigan as the top four teams and the publication’s projected makeup of this season’s 2016 College Football Playoff.
Something to keep in mind: Sports Illustrated’s record at picking national champions in its football preview issue is not particularly stellar.
Take the last three years, for example. In 2013, SI’s No. 1 preseason pick was Alabama (Florida State was national champion that year). In 2014, Florida State was the No. 1 pick in the SI preview issue (Ohio State surprised everybody by winning the national championship over Oregon; Florida State was in the College Football Playoff, but was knocked off in the national semifinals by Oregon). And last season, true to form. SI went with the previous year’s national champion, Ohio State, as its top choice in its preseason preview magazine. The Buckeyes didn’t even make it to the CFP, which was won by Alabama.
So here we are in August 2016, and Alabama, last year’s champions, are perched at the top of the SI Preseason Top 25. Oklahoma has been No. 1 previously in the SI preview issue (most recently in 2002), and that didn’t work out very well, either.
Oklahoma was No. 2 in the SI Preseason Top 25 in 2008. That season, the Sooners, led by Heisman Trophy quarterback Sam Bradford, lost to Tim Tebow and No. 1 Florida in the BCS National Championship game.