Oklahoma football: Sooners are 21st century championship pedigree
By Chip Rouse
As far as national championship talk goes, all you hear from those who claim to be in the know is Alabama and Clemson, and then comes everyone else. That’s clearly the case in recent years, but if you are an Oklahoma football fan, you look at it with a longer view.
When you go back a couple of decades to the beginning of the current century, Oklahoma football has been in the national championship picture more than any team not named Alabama
For the better part of the past four years, Alabama and Clemson have ruled the college football world, each winning a pair of national championships and appearing in all four College Football Playoffs.
The past four seasons, Bama and Clemson lead all of college football with a 58-4 record, including three wins already this season. That’s a 95 percent winning percentage. Next is Ohio State (48-6, .889) followed by Oklahoma (49-8, .860).
If you look back over the past 19 seasons (or since the 2000 season), however, the picture is much different.
Since 2000, Oklahoma has the most wins and the best overall record of all FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) teams. Over that time span, the Sooners have compiled an overall record of 210-47 (.817), with 183 of those wins credited to Bob Stoops and 27 to Lincoln Riley.
Next is Ohio State (200-50, .800). It should be noted, however, that the Buckeyes had to vacate 11 wins in 2010 because of ineligible players. Alabama did not fare well by Bama standards in the first decade of the 2000s with a record of 81-48. That includes the loss of eight wins in 2005 that were vacated because of NCAA rules infractions.
Since Nick Saban became the head coach in Tuscaloosa in 2007, though, Alabama is 144-21 (.873). For the past 19 seasons plus the first three games this season, Alabama has a combined record of 197-61 (.764).
In 11-plus seasons at Clemson, Dabo Swinney has put together a record of 119-30 (.799), but the Tigers were just 63-36 (.637) in the eight seasons before his arrival. That leaves Clemson with a 185-69 (.728).
Oklahoma Sooners Football
As far as being in a position to play for the national championship, since the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) was established in 1998, now replaced by the College Football Playoff, only Alabama has made more appearances than the Sooners.
In the 16 years the BCS was in existence (1998-2013) and was used to determine the two teams that would play for the national championship, Oklahoma appeared in the national championship game four times (2000, 2003, 2004 and 2008 seasons), winning the school’s seventh national title in 2000.
Oklahoma was not one of the four teams that made it into the first College Football Playoff in the 2014 season, but the Sooners have been a Playoff team in three of the past four years. Unfortunately OU has come up short in all three of its national semifinal appearances, including 45-34 to Alabama last season.
Alabama played in three BCS national championship games, winning all three, and has been in the College Football Playoff teams all five years that format has been in existence. Oklahoma’s four BCS Championship games, plus its three Playoff appearances, gives the Sooners seven such appearances.
Clemson has been to the College Football Playoff in four of the five years, but the Tigers did not play in any BCS Championships.
When you compare the overall records of Alabama, Clemson and Oklahoma in their BCS and CFP appearances, the Sooners are a distant third. Alabama is 9-3 in national championship competition since 1998, with five national championships. Clemson is 5-2, all in College Football Playoff competition, with two national championships.
Oklahoma, meanwhile, is 1-7 in national championship competition over the past 21 seasons with the lone victory coming in the 2000 BCS National Championship game, a 13-2 win over Florida State.
Could the Sooners make a third consecutive Playoff appearance this season? They’re off to a 3-0 start, but there is still a lot of football still to be played this season and the schedule gets increasingly more difficult moving forward.