Oklahoma football: Sooners generally start season better than they finish

Over the past two decades. Oklahoma football has generally begun the season ranked in the top 10 in the preseason polls.

As great as it sounds, however, being ranked among the country’s top 10 teams to start the season hasn’t worked out all that well for the Sooners looking back at the past 19 seasons.

In eight of the past 19 years, Oklahoma has ended the season ranked lower than where it began, according to research by the Tulsa World, which reviewed the preseason and postseason rankings of the Amway Coaches Poll, dating back to when Bob Stoops became head coach.

This season’s No. 5 preseason ranking marks the 18th  consecutive season Oklahoma has been ranked in the top 25 in the preseason Coaches Poll. During that time, OU has been ranked in the top ten 15 times to begin the season and in the top five 12 times.

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Twice in the past 19 seasons (2009 and 2014), the Sooners started out with a No. 3 ranking and ended the season unranked.

It hasn’t always been downhill for OU, though, from the season’s start. Five times since 1999, the Sooners have ended up better than they started out in the Coaches Poll. Two years ago, for example, in Baker Mayfield’s first season, Oklahoma was ranked 19th in the initial Coaches Poll and finished the season at No. 5. A similar outcome occurred two years earlier, in 2013, when the Sooners started out at No. 16 and moved up to No. 6 in the final rankings.

And who can forget the 2000 season? That year Stoops’ second roaming the OU sidelines, the Sooners began the year at No. 19 and, in early November had taken over the top spot, where they remained the rest of the season, going a perfect 13-0 and winning Oklahoma’s seventh national championship.

We’ve all heard the saying: It’s not how you start but how you finish that matters most. In that regard, you have to be impressed with the Oklahoma football record. Over the last nearly two decades, or since the Bob Stoops era began, the Sooners have ended the year ranked in the top 10 a dozen times, in the top five seven times and been one of the last four teams vying for the national championship six times.

Lincoln Riley is one for one in top-five finishes, and he is starting out the 2018 season in prime position to make it more than one in a row.