Oklahoma football: Sooners in thick of the ‘Fight for Four’
By Chip Rouse
On midday Sunday, all the talking and lobbying about who’s in and who’s out of the 2019 College Football Playoff will be cast upon a deaf ear, and we will know the ultimate fate of Oklahoma football insofar as postseason play.
Part of the picture will have become clear 36 hours earlier, when the Pac-12 Championship will have been decided between No. 5 Utah, the team immediately ahead of the Sooners in the CFP rankings, and No. 13 Oregon.
The Utes (11-1) are in the catbird’s seat right now, with the best path to the No. 4 spot of anyone other than Georgia. All it would take, in the minds of many, both experts and non-experts alike, who are weighing in on what the final makeup of college football’s version of the basketball Final Four will be this season is a Utah victory over underdog Georgia and for LSU to prevail over Georgia in the SEC showdown.
Many believe that Utah is a better team than Oklahoma or Baylor and has played more consistently and with more dominance in its 11 overall wins. That sets up the debate over which is a better measurement factor in determining Playoff worthiness, assuming the season records are equal:
Oklahoma Sooners Football
- A team that has beaten only one team currently ranked in the CFP Top 25 but has a winning margin of 27 points in its 11 regular-season wins, and by a 37.5-point margin in its last two regular-season games, or
- A team that has beaten three teams in the top 25, including one of those teams twice. It should also be pointed out, however, that three of this team’s four wins down the stretch were by four or fewer points.
That is the very dilemma the CFP selection committee is going to have on Sunday if both Utah and Oklahoma win their games, as expected, and No. 4 Georgia loses, of course.
If Utah losses to Oregon on Friday night, the door swings wide open for the Big 12 champion, whichever team that might be, to slide into that fourth and final Playoff position and a probable matchup with No. 1 Ohio State on Dec. 28, most likely at the Chick-fil-A Bowl in Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.
Should Baylor knock off the Sooners in the Big 12 Championship — sorry, Sooner fans, but that is not an unreasonable outcome — the one-loss Bears would have the same argument Oklahoma had a year ago, when the Sooners avenged an earlier loss to Texas by defeating the Longhorns in the conference championship game.
The one factor that would throw all of the what-if Playoff scenarios out the window is if Georgia were to upset LSU on Saturday. If that were to happen, the top-four teams currently (Ohio State, LSU, Clemson and Georgia, but not necessarily in that order) would remain the same and nothing else that happens on Friday or Saturday will matter, other than the jockeying for one of the four other New Year’s Six Bowls (Rose Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Orange Bowl and Cotton Bowl Classic).
Circling back to the Big 12 Championship game between four-time defending Big 12 champion Oklahoma and Baylor, both head coaches have taken the low-key approach in talking about what’s at stake in the game.
OU’s Lincoln Riley said this week that the Sooners’ approach to this game won’t be any different from any other. The only thing we have any control over is winning and losing, he said. All we can do is go out an win the game on Saturday, he continued, what happens after that is out of our control.
Matt Rhule of Baylor, the Big 12 Coach of the Year, has taken a similar yet slightly different approach: Saturday’s game isn’t about the College Playoff, the Big 12 Championship or even about Oklahoma, he said this week. It’s about us going out and executing and being 1-0 at game’s end, the same approach we’ve taken in each and every game this season.
The fact of the matter is one of these two teams — and only one — is going to come out the winner and be crowned 2019 Big 12 champion. According to handicappers like The Action Network, that team will be Oklahoma, but it probably will be closer than the nine-point spread that is currently being projected.
The most likely outcome from conference championship weekend is:
Utah beats Arizona in the Pac-12
Oklahoma gets by Baylor in the Big 12
LSU beats Georgia in the SEC
Clemson beats Virginia in the ACC
Ohio State over Wisconsin in the Big Ten
When that happens, get ready for a social media frenzy and another controversial College Football Playoff Selection Sunday. Although the decision may be final, the debate won’t be.