OU Football: Some Experts Still Have Strong Faith in Sooners
By Chip Rouse
After suffering an opening-game loss in a showcase national game most college football pundits and oddsmakers projected the Sooners to win, the status of OU football as one of the 2016 College Playoff contenders fell like a rock.
The Sooners dropped from No. 3 in the preseason major polls to 13th in this week’s Associated Press Top 25 and 14th in the Amway Coaches Poll.
In an opening weekend filled with marquee matchups, the Oklahoma performance against Houston was arguably the most surprising.
Even though we are just one week into the new season – and it has been demonstrated several times that top teams can recover from early losses and still finish high in the final rankings – a number of experts have pretty much written the Sooners off as a viable College Football Playoff contender.
One group of experts, however, still regards Oklahoma as one of the country’s best teams. although a couple of notches down from where they were a week ago.
Bruce Marshall of The Gold Sheet, a national sports handicapping service, Phil Steele and ESPN’s Football Power Index have pooled resources to form what is being called the College Football (CFB) Vegas Rankings.
After Week 1 of the 2016 college season, the Vegas Rankings have Oklahoma in the No. 7 slot behind No. 1 Alabama, Florida State, Clemson, Ohio State (which pays a visit to Oklahoma next weekend), Michigan and Tennessee. LSU, Washington and Stanford round out the top 10.
In case you might not have seen it, here is what ESPN’s Mackenzie Kraemer had to say about Oklahoma’s No. 7 ranking by the Vegas handicappers:
"“The first one-loss team on the list, Oklahoma remains highly regarded by the metrics. The Sooners’ odds to win the (national) title dropped from 10-1 to 20-1. However, (ESPN’s) Football Power Index gives Oklahoma just a 4.1 percent chance to win out, so the loss to Houston could have derailed the Sooners’ title hopes.”"
ESPN’s Football Power Index for the week of Sept. 5 gives Oklahoma a 40.4 percent chance of winning the Big 12 this season. That is down from 63.9 percent in the preseason.