They say the best way to secure a spot in the College Football Playoff is to take care of business on the field. Win all your games and you’re in. According to ESPN, Oklahoma football has the best chance of proving out that theory this season.
The Sooners last recorded a perfect season in their national championship season of 2000 in Bob Stoops’ second season on the job in Norman.
According to the most recent ESPN Football Power Index, Oklahoma has a 16.9 percent chance of going a perfect 12-0 in the regular season, despite having one of the more difficult schedules this coming season. Those odds are the highest of any team from a Power Five conference.
Behind the Sooners, two ACC teams, Clemson and Florida State, are given the best chance of winning out in the regular season: 8.6 and 6.5 percent, respectively. LSU leads all of the SEC teams, with a 5.3 percent chance of finishing with a perfect season, according to the Football Power Index.
A perfect regular-season run not only would guarantee a 10th Big 12 championship for the reigning champions but also almost assuredly, a spot in Oklahoma’s second consecutive College Football Playoff.
While it certainly sounds great on paper, winning all their games this season, luck or no luck, will be an extremely difficult task for the Sooners. Six teams on the Oklahoma 2016 schedule are ranked in the top 25 in preseason national polls, including in two of OU’s first three games of the season.
The Sooners open up against Houston on Sept. 3 and then host Ohio State two weeks later. Both of those teams ended the 2015 season ranked in the top 10 in the final Associated Press poll. And that’s before they get into the real meat of their 2016 schedule taking on Big 12 opponents.
Since 1946, at the end of World War II, there have been 22 seasons in which Oklahoma has lost no more than one game, and in several of those years the lone loss came in a postseason bowl in the final game of the season.
During its NCAA-record 47-game winning streak, Oklahoma went three straight seasons (1954-56) without suffering a loss and were the best team in college football in the latter two of those years. And from 1984 to 1987, head coach Barry Switzer led the Sooners to three consecutive 11-1 seasons, including a national championship in 1985.
Over the last 60 seasons, dating back to 1946, Oklahoma is the winningest team in college football with a total of 617 victories.
Bob Stoops’ teams have one undefeated season to their credit and the winningest Oklahoma head coach has 6 seasons of a dozen wins or more.
The pins are racked, set and ready to go for 2016, and 41 days from now, all the words will have to start being backed up by the commensurate action as the real games get underway.