There will be a 2020 Oklahoma football season — on paper, at least — albeit a shorter one than Sooner fans are accustomed to.
Now that the big guns in the college football universe — namely the Power Five conferences — have a game plan for how to play football in a world widely endangered by COVID-19, the next thing for the Big 12, at least, is figuring out when to officially kick off the season.
Under the 9-plus-1 scheduling model adopted by the Big 12, every conference team will play one game against a nonconference opponent, followed by a nine-game, round-robin Big 12 schedule. With the previously scheduled games with Tennessee and Army now cancelled, Missouri State remains on the schedule and would fulfill the Sooners nonconference requirement.
Oklahoma and Missouri State were originally scheduled to kick off the 2020 season on Sept. 5, Labor Day weekend. In an effort to provide an extra week between each of the Sooners’ three originally scheduled nonconference games out of precaution should COVID issues arise, OU athletic director Joe Castiglione asked the NCAA to grant a waiver allowing for the game to be moved up a week, to Aug. 29.
That waiver was granted and now leaves the Sooners will the possibility of playing their first game on Aug. 29 and then having to wait three weeks or longer before playing their second game of the 2020 season.
There is a good chance that OU and Missouri State will agree to go back to the original Sept. 5 date to open the season. Missouri State is scheduled to face Montana on Sept. 12, so Sept. 5 would be the only available rescheduling option without scrapping the game entirely.
There could be several weeks between Oklahoma football’s first and second games of 2020.
In a normal year, which this one clearly isn’t, given all the health and safety concerns surrounding the coronavirus, teams like to get that first game out of the way to work out the rustiness of not having played under true game conditions since the final game of the previous season as well as acclimating new personnel. They make adjustments and then got right back at it in game two the next weekend.
With two or more weeks between games, you potentially lose the continuity and timing that is so important to successfully execute the wide-open offensive designs that proliferate in today’s day and age of college football.
It is more or less like starting all over again when there is a gap of several weeks between your first and second games of the season. And this year, that second game is going to be against an all-important conference opponent.
With Tennessee and Army gone from the schedule this season, it would appear that Oklahoma’s one game outside the of Big 12 is going to be against a team from the Football Championship Subdivision. This could negatively impact the Sooners and their strength of schedule case when it comes time to select the top four teams to compete in the College Football Playoff.
Even if Oklahoma were to successfully capture a sixth consecutive Big 12 title, if, in the judgement of the CFP selection committee, the Big 12 isn’t that strong this coming season, and without a quality nonconference win to boost the resume, the Sooners could be on the outside looking in with four other Power Five conference champions to chose from, not to mention quality SEC and Big Ten runners-up.
The one thing that should work in Oklahoma’s favor, under the presumption that it retains its Big 12 crown and when it comes time to sort out the best of the best for postseason consideration, is the Sooners’ strong reputation and recent history.
Oklahoma has yet to secure a College Football Playoff victory, but the Sooners have been there in four the six seasons that championship format has been in existence. And they appeared four other times in the Bowl Championship Series championship game, which preceded the Playoff model.