Two seasons ago, in Brent Venables maiden season as head ball coach at Oklahoma, the Sooners won as few as six games for the first time in nearly a quarter century.
The 2022 Oklahoma team was not a very good team with not a lot of depth at key positions. The Sooners lost 49-0 that season to Texas. The 2024 Sooner team, however, which begins play in the big bad SEC this season, is much improved over the 2022 OU squad. Yet at least one college football analyst believes this year's team will be lucky to win as many as half of its 12 regular season games.
The reason being, ostensibly, because the Sooners are playing in a much stronger conference and with a 2024 schedule that has them playing six SEC teams likely to be ranked in the top-15 in the country.
Las Vegas oddsmakers have the Oklahoma win total for the coming season at 7.5 games.
JD PicKell, who writes for the college sports and recruiting website On3, has Oklahoma winning its opening three games against nonconference opponents Temple, Houston and Tulane before dropping three consecutive games to Tennessee, Auburn and Texas in that order. PicKell projects OU to bounce back from the three-game skid with a win at home over South Carolina but losing the next weekend at Ole Miss.
The Sooners will defeat Maine at home for win number five and follow that up with a road win over former conference foe Missouri, a loss at home to Alabama and loss at LSU in the regular-season finale.
I agree that the 2024 Oklahoma team will win all four nonconference games. But I think the Sooners will beat Tennessee in Josh Heupel's return to Norman and also take one from Auburn on the road. I also believe OU will make it close at home against Alabama and could even upset the Crimson Tide.
With that in mind, Oklahoma could potentially be looking at an 8-4 or even 9-3 finish instead of going 6-6 as PicKell is suggesting.
And that's why all the preseason hypothesizing means nothing, nada, zilch until the games are actually played.