Oklahoma Football: What Will Be the Biggest Game for the Sooners in 2016?
By Chip Rouse
Any way you want to slice and dice it, the 2016 Oklahoma football schedule is one of the toughest – if not the toughest – in the country.
The 2016 season of Sooner football kicks off with a roadie at Houston, and then two weeks later the Ohio State Buckeyes, just two seasons removed from a national championship, pay a visit to newly renovated Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium.
Both Houston and Ohio State will be ranked in the top 25 to start the season, and there is a good chance that the Buckeyes will rank ahead of Oklahoma when the two teams meet on Sept.17.
The Sooners won’t get much of a break after the nonconference portion of the schedule, but they do get a week off before having to go to TCU. An away game against the Horned Frogs could easily be the toughest conference game for OU next fall, especially given that the last three games between these two teams have been decided by four points or less.
Last season, playing before the home crowd, Oklahoma narrowly escaped with a one point win, and that was against a TCU team that was playing without its All-Big 12 starting quarterback, Trevone Boykin. The game was still very much in doubt right down to the end, and the Sooners survived only because safety Stephen Parker was able to bat down a pass to a wide-open TCU receiver in the end zone on a two-point conversion try that would have won the game for the Horned Frogs.
A week after playing at TCU, the Sooners take to the road again for their annual Red River Showdown with Texas. OU will have a score to settle in this one, having been upset 24-17 last season by the Longhorns, who handed the Sooners their only regular-season loss.
Although it would appear that Oklahoma has a disproportionate number of away contests over the first half of the 2016 schedule, after the midway point, the schedule does turn around to favor the Sooners with home dates against Kansas State and Baylor and a regular-season Bedlam finale against Oklahoma State.
The toughest game on the 2016 schedule may well be a toss up between the season opener at Houston and the Oct. 1 road date with TCU. But I don’t view that question the same as what is the biggest game on the schedule for the Sooners in 2016.
In July, my StorminiNorman.com colleague Sixto Ortiz will post a series of articles reviewing all 12 Oklahoma football games in the 2016 regular season, but in this article I am offering my view on what I believe will be the biggest game for the Sooners next fall.
A quick glance at the 2016 slate of games for Oklahoma would lead almost everybody to single out the game with Ohio State as being the signature game on the OU football schedule next season. I admit to being one of those people, but it is not for that reason that I believe the Ohio State game is the biggest game on the coming season’s schedule.
I believe the OSU game – the first of a two-year home-and-home series with the Buckeyes, by the way – is pivotal because how the Sooners perform in this undeniably important game between ranked teams will set the table for what we can expect from the 2016 Sooners going into the all-important and always tough Big 12 schedule and for the remainder of the season.
A victory not only looms large because it would in all likelihood be over a team ranked higher than the Sooners, but because of the confidence lift that goes with it that this Oklahoma team is capable of beating anyone when it plays its game and minimizes mental and physical mistakes.
While a home loss to Ohio State would be neither fatal nor final, the pathway to a return to the College Football Playoff would be seriously obstructed. The outcome of the game with the Buckeyes will have no bearing on the Big 12 race, other than to give the Sooners’ conference opponents ideas and insights on how to game plan for OU.
There is no question, though, that a loss to OSU would leave Oklahoma with its back to the wall in terms of remaining unbeaten the remainder of the season and landing one of the top six postseason bowl assignments.
The Las Vegas oddsmakers happen to like Oklahoma’s chances in several of its bigger games this coming season, including what is certain to be a nationally televised prime-time showdown with coach Urban Meyer and the Ohio State Buckeyes.
The Las Vegas sports book South Point has come out with its preseason odds on a host of big games this coming season.
As things stand today, still over two months away from the start of the 2016 season in college football, South Point likes the Sooners by nine points against Ohio State, by 14 over archrival Texas and by 12.5 points in the final game of the regular season with Oklahoma State.