Oklahoma football: Winning Big 12 not enough for Sooners this season

The four years that Lincoln Riley has been associated with Oklahoma football have been about as good as it gets.

Riley joined Bob Stoops, beginning in the 2015 season, as offensive coordinator,  and two years later took the program reigns as head coach following Stoops’ retirement. What could have been a slight bump in the road, as often results when coaching transitions occur, couldn’t have been more seamless.

In fact, I would challenge anybody to show me a first two years by any head coach in college football history that exceeded what Riley and the Sooners accomplished. The only thing missing from what otherwise would be perfection was a pair of national championship trophies.

Twenty-four wins in 28 games, back-to-back Big 12 titles and College Football Playoff appearances, two consecutive Heisman Trophy-winning quarterbacks, both of whom went No. 1 overall in consecutive NFL drafts. And you can add to that the nation’s No. 1 offense and top-four finishes in each of the past two seasons.

That’s Riley’s head-coaching resume so far. In his four years at OU, the Sooners are 46-8 (.852). It is not a coincidence that Oklahoma has won the Big 12 every season Riley has been in Norman.

The Sooners, like other major college programs, begin every season with two primary goals: win the conference championship and put yourself in position to play for and win a national championship.

Since the turn of the century, Oklahoma has made somewhat of a mockery of the Big 12 championship chase, winning the conference crown six times over the past decade and 12 times in the past 19 seasons. Over that same time span, Texas and Baylor are the next closest with two each.

While the Sooners have reached the Big 12 summit a total of 12 times in the 23-year history of the conference, they have come up short six different times — three in the BCS era (2003, 2004 and 2008) and now three in the College Football Playoff era (2015, 2017 and 2018) — since the 2000 national championship season in their quest to lay claim to an eighth national title.

Oklahoma Sooners Football

Oklahoma is the only Big 12 team to make a Playoff appearance in the five years of the College Football Playoff championship format. The Sooners have made the Playoff in three of the last four years. Along with that distinction, however, they also bear the burden of being the only team to make multiple Playoff appearances without winning a Playoff game.

The Sooners lost as the No. 4 seed in the national semifinal game against Clemson in 2015, to Georgia in double overtime in 2017 as the No. 2 seed, and last season, as the No. 4 seed, to Alabama.

Needless to say, the Sooners and their fans are becoming extremely frustrated with the bridesmaid role when it comes down to the last four teams standing. Oklahoma clearly has been in the right position and has had the opportunity more than any team not named Alabama or Clemson to get to the national championship game.

Alabama is the only team to appear in all five College Football Playoffs, winning it all twice. Clemson has made four appearances, coming away with two national titles. Ohio State and Georgia have both participated in two Playoffs, with Ohio State being crowned national champion in the inaugural Playoff year, in 2014.

Of those four schools, however, Oklahoma is the only team that has failed to register a CFP win.

As the No. 4 team in both of the major polls (Associated Press Top 25 and the Coaches Poll) to begin the 2019 season, OU is a national title contender again this season.

The Sooners are pretty much the consensus favorites to take home another Big 12 championship trophy, and that is a necessary requirement just to get into the Playoff conversation.

Winning the conference is certainly a big deal, but it won’t be enough to satisfy the Sooners’ insatiable appetite this season.

It’s going to sound wildly pompous to say this, but neither will it be enough just to get to the Playoff. The Sooners have been there and done that already and come up empty on all three trips. Job one for the Sooners this season is not just to get into the Playoff but win a game and advance to the national championship showdown, where anything can happen.

That is an extremely lofty, and some would say, audacious goal — one that only two teams will have achieved by season’s end. OU has already shown it has the makeup to get that far. Now it’s time for the crimson and cream to show that it can do something with the opportunity once it is there.