Oklahoma vs. TCU: Six Story Lines to Keep in Mind

Four games into the 2016 college football season, and the Oklahoma Sooners will have already gone toe to toe against three nationally ranked teams. This Saturday it is Oklahoma vs. TCU in a matchup of two Big 12 title contenders.

The reigning Big 12 champion Sooners, who were projected to repeat in the conference’s annual preseason media poll, are on wobbly legs at the moment after incurring knockout punches from a couple of teams currently ranked among the nation’s top 10 teams.

Oklahoma begins Big 12 play on Saturday on the road at TCU, which lies in wait hoping to deliver yet another knockout blow to a team that just a few weeks ago was considered one of the favorites to lock down one of the four spots in this year’s College Football Playoff.

Here are five intriguing story lines to ponder in the week-long buildup to this highly anticipated confrontation between the Sooners and the Horned Frogs:

• TCU is 2-1 this season, ranked 21st in this week’s Associated Press Top 25 and playing at home this weekend in its Big 12 matchup with the Sooners. Oklahoma, which is 1-2 to begin the 2016 season, is not ranked (after starting out the season at No. 3), marking the first time in three years that both teams have not been ranked at the time of the OU-TCU game. Despite all of this, the Sooners have been established as a 3.5-point favorite in the game.
• Sooner second-year quarterback Baker Mayfield has played in five true road games at Oklahoma. In those five road games, Mayfield has completed 68 percent of his passes, thrown for 17 touchdowns and is averaging 260 yards and 50 points per game. Most importantly, he is 5-0 as the Oklahoma starting quarterback is those five true road games.
• Oklahoma is 10-5 all-time against TCU in football and 3-1 since the Horned Frogs became members of the Big 12. The Sooners have a better record against head coach Gary Patterson’s team on the road than they do playing in Norman. Oklahoma is 5-1 when the game has been played at TCU, but is just 5-4 against the Horned Frogs in Norman.
• Under Bob Stoops, Oklahoma has won  35 consecutive games following a regular-season loss and has not suffered back-to-back losses since the 1999 season.
• Saturday’s game marks the 10th time since Bob Stoops has been at Oklahoma that the Sooners have been unranked when facing a team ranked in the AP Top 25. Oklahoma is 5-4 in those games, including wins in four of the last five. The OU head coach is 55-30 (.647) all-time against AP Top 25 teams, second best in the country since 1999 next to Ohio State (.658 win percentage) and LSU (57 wins).

Perhaps the biggest story line, though, surrounding the Sooners’ game at TCU on Saturday is the fact that you have to go back 51 seasons and eight head coaches to the last time Oklahoma went 1-3 to start a season. In 1965, the Sooners under Gomer Jones went 0-3 to begin the season, losing to Pittsburgh, Navy and Texas before posting their first win, 21-7 over Kansas. Oklahoma finished the season with a 3-7 overall record.

Oklahoma was 0-4 to start the 1996 season, the first under head coach John Blake and the first year of the Big 12 Conference. The Sooners got their first win that year in their fifth game, a 30-27 win over archrival Texas. Oklahoma finished 3-8 that season, with two of its three wins over its biggest rivals: Texas and Oklahoma State.