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Oklahoma football: How would OU do in a 64-team 2020 pigskin playoff?

By Chip Rouse

ATLANTA, GEORGIA - DECEMBER 28: Oklahoma Sooners animal mascots Boomer and Sooner pulling Sooner Schooner Conestoga wagon on the field before the game against the LSU Tigers in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on December 28, 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
ATLANTA, GEORGIA - DECEMBER 28: Oklahoma Sooners animal mascots Boomer and Sooner pulling Sooner Schooner Conestoga wagon on the field before the game against the LSU Tigers in the Chick-fil-A Peach Bowl at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on December 28, 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images) /
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Think there’s no Oklahoma football news — fake or otherwise — to talk about in these apocalyptic times? Think again.

With all live sports of any kind cancelled until further notice, one way to fill in the idle time is to dream up what-if scenarios, such as how would the Oklahoma football team do if the College Football Playoff were expanded next season to a wide-open, 64-team tournament like March Madness?

Purely hypothetical, of course, because it wouldn’t be practical to stage a playoff format of that size or scope in college football. For one thing, there are almost three times more teams playing NCAA Division I basketball than there are football teams at the same level.

To fill a 64-team bracket, almost half of the schools that make up the Football Bowl Subdivision would make it into the field, and the quality level drops off significantly after as many as 40 teams. This is not the case in college basketball, where the competitive level cuts much deeper.

We all know, in reality, something like this would never happen, for all the aforementioned reasons and dozens more. Heck, there’s tremdousBut for the sake of fantasy and to have some fun, let’s imagine that it did. That’s what senior writer Chris Low and the staff at ESPN have done by projecting, seeding and playing out what a 64-team Playoff bracket might look like heading into the 2020 season.

To seed the teams, ESPN used its own 2020 preseason (College) Football Power Index. Ranked third in ESPN’s 2020 preseason college football FPI, Oklahoma is one of the top four seeds and No. 3 overall. The other top seeds are Clemson, with the No. 1 overall seed, No. 2 Ohio State and No. 4 Alabama.

In this fantasy playoff format, the Sooners are the top seed in the South Region, which also includes No. 12 seed Texas Tech and No. 13 Kansas State.

You can follow how the first the first and second rounds play out in this hypothetical college football supplement for March Madness by clicking here. The ESPN fantasy simulation has narrowed the 64-team field down to the Sweet 16.

Nine Big 12 football teams made the 64-team field, with Kansas the only team that failed to make it in to the hypothetical tournament.

Four of the nine Big 12 teams advanced to the Sweet 16 round. I will let you find out on your own which ones are still alive.

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