CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm Sees OU Football Going All the Way in 2016
By Chip Rouse
As the big boys of college football – OU football included – steadily work their way to the starting line for the kick off of the 2016 season, we’re all suffering a sensory overload of who the power players are and where they will line up come season’s end.
One of the great things about college football preseason propaganda is that if you don’t like one expert’s view of the world, there is usually someone else you can turn to who will tell you what you want to hear.
For those in Sooner Nation who were disturbed by what seemed like a lower than deserved ranking of Oklahoma in the magazine’s annual college preview issue out this week, I submit to you a counter view that should help curb your depressed state.
The Big 12 has begun putting the wheels in motion to appease the NCAA College Football Playoff selection committee and other critics who are convinced that the conference needs to hold a championship game in football to be on an equal playing field with the other four so-called power conferences. The Big 12 is still a year off from reinstating a football championship game, but Jerry Palm, CBSSports.com’s basketball bracketology and College Football Playoff expert, doesn’t believe that will make a difference in 2016.
Palm not only has the Sooners returning to the College Football Playoff in 2016 for a second consecutive appearance, he projects them as the No. 1 seed.
“The Sooners have arguably the most difficult nonconference schedule of any Power Five school, with a game at Houston to start and a home matchup with Ohio State in Week 3.” Palm writes in his most recent CBSSports.com blog. Palm also points out that the Sooners get conference contenders Baylor and Oklahoma State at home this season.
Palm projects Clemson, which defeated Oklahoma rather handily in one of the CFP national semifinal games a year ago, as the No. 2 seed, followed by defending national champion Alabama and Notre Dame as the other two Playoff participants this season.
If you examine those picks closely, you will notice that there are no Big Ten or Pac-12 teams included among Palm’s Playoff picks. If that Palm’s crystal ball view become reality, it will be the second straight year that a Pac-12 team has been left out of the Playoff.
It also would be two consecutive Playoff appearances for the Sooners, who would be the only Big 12 team to have participated in college football’s Final Four in its third season of existence.