Next Fall’s Sooner Football Schedule Heavily Backloaded
By Chip Rouse
If you could pick just one Oklahoma Sooner football game to attend or view in 2015, which game would you choose? That may not be as easy a task as it may seem.
The road date at Tennessee in Week 2 of the 2015 season might draw the most interest, given its early season timing, when the appetite and championship hopes among college football fans is still at a high point, and the fact the opponent hails from the college game’s strongest football conference.
No question that is the most attractive nonconference game on the Sooners’ 2015 gridiron slate, but as far as the schedule maker is concerned, the best and potentially biggest stretch of games is saved for last.
Nov 8, 2014; Norman, OK, USA; Oklahoma Sooners quarterback Trevor Knight (9) throws during the game against the Baylor Bears at Gaylord Family – Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
The final three games of the season in mid-to-late November will determine the fate of Oklahoma football in 2015. Over this final three weeks, the Sooners will face Baylor, TCU and Oklahoma State, arguably the three best teams in the Big 12 next season, based on the early projections of a number of college football experts. To make matters even more precarious for coach Bob Stoops’ troops, the contests against Baylor and Bedlam opponent Oklahoma State are on the road.
The Sooners also must travel to Kansas State next season, which is never a walk in the park, regardless of what kind of team K-State coach Bill Snyder puts on the field, and there is also the annual Red River Showdown rivalry with hated archrival Texas in Dallas.
In the 2013 season, OU faced a similar killer schedule over the final month of the season, with three of the Sooners final four games taking place on the road at Baylor, Kansas State and Oklahoma State. The Sooners lost big at Baylor, but won as underdogs at K-State and Oklahoma State, with a comfortable victory at home over Iowa State sandwiched in between. That was the same season Oklahoma defied all odds by knocking off heavily favored and two-time defending champion Alabama in the BCS Sugar Bowl.
The 2015 edition of Sooner football is unranked (this is not a misprint) in several early preseason national polls. Despite this, there is a good probability that Oklahoma will be favored in its first nine games of 2015. If this were to hold true, and the Sooners live up to the expectations, they would be 9-0 and top-20-ranked for certain when the travel to Waco, Texas, to lay it on the line against Baylor.
That would be followed by an even stronger challenge, perhaps, at home the next weekend as host to TCU. And then it’s Bedlam at Oklahoma State.
The way the 2015 Oklahoma football schedule sets up, the first two-thirds of the season places a premium on OU wins. That’s the good part. Otherwise, the gauntlet at the back end could deliver a bad and ugly outcome to the Sooners’ season.