Oklahoma football remained in the country’s top five in both the Associated Press and the Coaches college football polls after a Week 3 victory over Iowa State.
The Sooners never trailed in winning for the 24th consecutive time playing at Iowa State and for the 77th time in the 83 games all-time between the two longtime conference foes.
Oklahoma is No. 5 again this week in both of the major human polls. The Sooners have been ranked in the top five of the Associated Press Top 25 more weeks than any other college team (409) since the AP poll was introduced in 1936.
Alabama is firmly fixed in the No. 1 spot in both the AP and the Coaches Poll, and Georgia and Clemson swapped positions in the AP poll, with Georgia replacing Clemson at No, 2. Otherwise, the top five spots remained the same, with Ohio State holding down the No. 4 ranking ahead of the Sooners.
Oklahoma Sooners Football
Louisiana State and Wisconsin were the biggest movers from Week 3 to Week 4. LSU’s last-second win over Auburn moved them up six and seven spots, to No. 6 in both polls. Wisconsin, on the other hand, dropped from No, 6 all the way to No, 18 in the AP poll and 16th in the Coaches Poll after losing at home to unranked BYU.
Oklahoma’s 10-point margin of victory in its Big 12 opener with Iowa State ostensibly raised some concern with the computer models that forecast the remainder of the season. Penn State, a 63-10 winner over Kent State on Saturday, edged past the Sooners into the No, 4 spot in ESPN’s Football Power Index for this week. Even though both schools are 3-0 and the Penn State barely escaped an opening-game upset by Appalachian State, the Nittany Lions’ remaining strength of schedule is rated higher than the Sooners and is ostensibly the reason Penn State replaced OU in the four spot.
The FPI gives Oklahoma a 68.4-percent chance of winning the Big 12 championship this season and a 16.8-percent chance of finishing undefeated in the regular season.
The Sooners also slipped back a bit in ESPN’s College Football Playoff Predictor. Oklahoma was tied with Georgia at No. 4 a week ago, but the Bulldogs jumped over Ohio State and Clemson into the No. 2 Playoff spot this week, dropping OU to No. 5. The Sooners have a 49-percent chance of making it into the Playoff this season, according to this week’s Playoff Predictor, a 22-percent chance of making it to the CFP championship game and a 10-percent chance of winning the 2018 national title.
Clemson’s Playoff odds are better than Oklahoma’s by only the tiniest of margins at the one-quarter pole in the college football season. Clemson’s chances are rated at 50 percent to make the Playoff, 22 percent to get to the championship game, but just a nine-percent chance to win it all.