Oklahoma football: Warning to Oklahoma State fans caught up in SI’s top-4 ranking
By Chip Rouse
‘Oklahoma football fans know a little something about the perils of being featured on a Sports Illustrated cover.
As great as it seems at the time, an appearance on a Sports Illustrated cover frequently is not all it’s cracked up to be. Being the subject of an SI cover is both to be celebrated and, to many of the more cynical persuasion, cursed.
There is a long-standing urban myth that when you appear as the featured subject on an SI cover, you have a good chance of falling victim to the dreaded Sports Illustrated jinx and suffering subsequent bad luck or ill fortune.
And the jinx isn’t just confined to appearing on an SI cover. It can have the same pernicious effect on teams that appear in the top five in the popular sports magazine’s annual College Football Preview issue.
Sports Illustrated’s 2017 College football Preview issue hit the newsstands this week. The Oklahoma Sooners are No. 6 in the SI Preseason Top 25. That’s pretty good news if you are a Sooner fan (fairly consistent with most of the preseason top-25 rankings for the 2017 college football season).
What isn’t so good news for fans of OU football is seeing those hated Cowboys of Oklahoma State ranked ahead of the Sooners by the writers and editors of Sports Illustrated. And to add insult to injury, Cowboy quarterback Mason Rudolph appears on one of the SI regional covers this week along with the headline: “Orange Rush: Oklahoma State in the Playoff? Yes.”
Within the pages of the SI college preview issue you will also find the promulgation: “Spoiler: Oklahoma State could improve things for the Big 12.”
Translation: SI projects Oklahoma State to beat Oklahoma in the regular season, and a second time in the Big 12 Championship game, which returns this season after a six-year absence.
Oklahoma knows a thing or two about being featured on a Sports Illustrated cover. After all, no current Big 12 team has appeared on an SI cover more than the Sooners, and Ohio State is perhaps the only college football team nationally with more appearances than Oklahoma.
As a member of the top two of all-time college football Sports Illustrated cover subjects, the Sooners also can tell us a thing or two about why that is not necessarily a good thing.
Oklahoma Sooners Football
As recently as March 2016, Buddy Hield was featured on an SI cover pumping up Oklahoma’s appearance in the NCAA Basketball Final Four. Need I remind you that the Sooners were blown out by Villanova by 44 points in their very next game.
In 2002, former OU All-American Tommie Harris was featured on the cover of SI’s College Preview Issue with the headline: “So Good, It’s Scary.” Oklahoma was SI’s top-ranked team that season. The Sooners lost two games that season: to Texas A&M and Oklahoma State, both on the road and quickly fell out of the chase for the BCS Championship.
In 2012, quarterback Landry Jones graced the SI cover in the college preview issue. The main cover headline in that issue read: “Deep Threat: Oklahoma’s Landry Jones is well armed to lead the Sooners to the Big 12 title and beyond that.” The Sooners were No. 4 in the SI Top 25 that preseason and did win the Big 12 that season, but they lost three games in doing so, including a season-ending 41-13 beatdown by Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl.
Perhaps the most notable example of Oklahoma football and the SI cover jinx occurred way back in 1957, when the magazine was barely three years old. Sooner All-American halfback Clendon Thomas appeared on a November 1957 cover, along with several of his teammates pictured on the sidelines. The cover headline was: “Why Oklahoma is Unbeatable.”
The next game after the magazine came out, the Sooners lost to Notre Dame, ending their unprecedented 47-game winning streak.
I offer these words of advice, on behalf of my fellow Sooner faithful, to all Oklahoma State fans, who have to be giddy about their beloved Cowboys being ranked above Oklahoma in the SI preseason poll: Before you rush to judgement and prematurely crown your team as conference champions…and what perhaps lies beyond…just remember that the Sports Illustrated jinx is out there lurking and loves nothing more than to crush championship dreams.
Championship seasons are made on the field of play, not by wishful projections published and publicized on the pages of a magazine. See you in Bedlam on Nov. 4.