Where does 2017 Oklahoma football rank on the entertainment scale?
By Chip Rouse
With just a week to go before we can officially welcome back Oklahoma football and all the madness and sometimes sadness that comes with it, it’s time to get on with the games and away from all the preseason rankings and rankling.
How many ways are there, for crying out loud (that’s COL, if you are following along on Twitter), to rank college football teams? Seemingly more than we care to hear or know about. And what does it really matter when no one has played a single game yet?
Let’s admit it, though, sometimes the high point of the season exists when the team to which you cast you allegiance scores higher in the preseason than when the warriors of the gridiron actually begin colliding in battle.
The goal for every coach, player and fan is to win games, and to win ’em all if you are able and so lucky. As ESPN’s Mark Schlabach suggests, “college football is about more than positioning for the postseason.
“Each Saturday brings a new opportunity for delight or despair,” Schlabach writes in an ESPN.com article on what he portrays as college football’s most “binge-worthy” teams.
“Every team has its own personality,” he says, “and it’s college football’s unpredictability and sheer madness that separates it from other sports.”
With that in mind, Schlabach and his journalistic colleagues at ESPN have come up with yet one more way to rank the best in college football heading into the new season. Aside from wins and losses and strength of schedule analyses, which teams are going to be the most entertaining in 2017?
Introducing the “Watchability Rankings,” or the ten teams that are projected to be the most entertaining to watch this college football season.
The rankings are based on how a team grades out in five critical factors: the Finebaum factor, the Cage factor, the Spurrier factor, the Corso factor and the Freeze factor. You can click here to get the full monty on what these factors represent.
The top 10 teams based on entertainment value, according to the ESPN measurement criteria, is a fair representation of teams that command the most popularity of fan support nationally but not necessarily an orderly depiction of the best teams heading into the 2017 season. The good news for Oklahoma Sooner fans is that OU makes the cut either way.
The Sooners are No. 7 in the ESPN “Watchability Rankings” for 2017. Interestingly, that is also where they fall, on average, in the major preseason rankings.
The narrative that accompanies the Oklahoma listing reads:
"“Sooners quarterback Baker Mayfield is quintessentially college — he isn’t blowing up Mel Kiper Jr.’s NFL Draft board but he’s going to keep blowing up opposing defenses. New Oklahoma head coach Lincoln Riley looks as if he could still be in college…Riley will get to test his skills against one of the big boys early. Oklahoma plays at Ohio State on Sept. 9 — four days after he turns 34.”"
Spoiler alert — and Sooner fans aren’t going to like this one bit: The No. 1 team for entertainment value in the “Watchability Rankings” is that other school from the Sooner State: Oklahoma State.
Next: Five Players the Sooners MUST account for this season
Tell you what, we’ll give the Cowboys the top ranking for entertainment value. What we’re most interested in is a top-four ranking after the votes are cast by the College Football Playoff selection committee.