OU Football: Sooners Wind Up No. 5 in Final AP Media Poll
By Chip Rouse
The curtain officially came down on the 2015 OU football season with the release of the final Associated Press rankings.
The Sooners finished the 2015 season ranked No. 5 in final AP Top 25.
Alabama, which won its fourth national championship in the past six years on Monday night with a hard-fought 45-40 victory over previously top-ranked Clemson, jumped into the top spot in the final rankings, with Clemson falling to No. 2. Rose Bowl winner Stanford and Ohio State, which defeated Notre Dame in the Fiesta Bowl, both jumped over Oklahoma to finish No. 3 and No. 4, respectively.
The Sooners also fell to No. 5 in the USA Today Coaches Poll. By claiming the No. 5 spot in both major polls, Oklahoma, which finished the year with an 11-2 record, ended the season 14 positions higher than its preseason ranking of 19th. OU ended the season a year ago outside of the top 25 after suffering a 34-point loss to Clemson in the Russell Athletic Bowl.
Prior to the bowl season, Oklahoma was ranked No. 1 in the ESPN Football Power Index, but after the Playoff loss to Clemson, the Sooners dropped all the way to No. 6 in the final FPI. Here is what ESPN.com wrote about Oklahoma upon the release of its final Football Power Index of 2015: “One of the hottest teams in the nation heading into the postseason, the Sooners got outclassed by Clemson…The team bounced back from so much on and off the field in 2015, but ran out of juice in the biggest game of the season.”
Oklahoma leads all FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) schools in the number of weeks the Sooners have been ranked in the top five of the AP rankings. Since the AP poll was first introduced in 1936, OU has been ranked among the top five schools in college football for a total of 393 weeks. This year’s national champion Alabama is a distant second with more than 40 weeks fewer as a top-five-ranked team.
Rounding out the AP Top 10 for 2015 are 6) Michigan State, 7) TCU, 8) Houston, who Oklahoma opens the season with next fall, 9) Iowa and 10) Ole Miss.
In addition to Oklahoma and TCU, other Big 12 schools finishing the season ranked in the Top 25 are Baylor (13) and Oklahoma State (20).