Oklahoma Football 2016: Opening Kickoff Drawing Closer; 17 Days Away
By Chip Rouse
Much has been written about the difficulty of the Oklahoma football schedule to open the 2016 college season.
The Sooner schedule this season is clearly front-loaded with challenging contests. Two of OU’s first three games are against nonconference opponents ranked in the nation’s top 20. Add to that, their first conference game is on the road at TCU, another team ranked in most every preseason poll. And this is just four games into the 2016 season.
Oklahoma starts off with arguably the toughest opening game of any of the projected 2016 national contenders, having to travel to Houston to square off against a team that finished 13-1 last season and was ranked No. 8 in the final Associated Press poll.
The game with Houston will draw enough attention, but perhaps the signature showdown of the 2016 college football season will take place two weeks later, when Ohio State travels to Norman. Chances are very high that we could be looking at a battle between two top-five teams when Sept. 17 rolls around on the calendar.
Many college football experts contend that if the Sooners can successfully navigate through the first half of the 2016 schedule, which by the way also includes the Red River Showdown with Texas and a game against coach Bill Snyder’s Kansas State Wildcats, they will have assured themselves of a return to the College Football Playoff. Hard to argue with that deduction given the quality of the wins Oklahoma will have checked off up to that point.
Between Houston and Ohio State alone, Oklahoma will face teams with a combined 2015 record of 25-2, and if you add TCU in game four, the won-lost record of three of the first four OU opponents goes up to 36-4.
The Sooners do get a break of sorts in the schedule with home games against two teams, University of Louisiana-Monroe and Kansas, with a combined record of 2-23 a year ago.
Five Oklahoma opponents (Houston, Ohio State TCU, Baylor and Oklahoma State) this season won 10 or more games a year ago, and three of those 2016 games will be at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman.
The first half of the OU 2016 schedule is against teams with a combined record of 49-29 a year ago. By contrast, the second half of the Sooner season will be less daunting, going up against six teams that went a combined 38-38 in 2015.
For the full 2016 campaign, the overall record last season of the 12 teams on the Oklahoma schedule was 87-67.
The first half of the 2016 Oklahoma schedule is definitely as tough as they get. Some are saying that if the Sooners can open the season 6-0 with that schedule, they have a better than good chance of finishing the regular season 12-0, all but guaranteeing a spot in the College Football Playoff.
I take a somewhat contrarian view. As much as I would love to see OU prevail through the challenging first-half of its schedule, I’m also concerned that the back-half of the 2015 schedule might be filled with several big-time trap games for the Sooners.
Like the Nov. 19 trip to Morgantown to play West Virginia. And it shouldn’t be a walk in the park on Oct. 22 at Texas Tech, either.
Just like you have to be prepared to play the entire 60 minutes of a football game, Oklahoma must be prepared and focused to play the full schedule in 2016. Anything less will lead to major disappointment.