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Oklahoma football: Sooners No. 5 in revised, reduced top 25

By Chip Rouse

MANHATTAN, KS - OCTOBER 26: A general field of footballs on the field before a game between the Kansas State Wildcats and Oklahoma Sooners at Bill Snyder Family Football Stadium on October 26, 2019 in Manhattan, Kansas. (Photo by Peter G. Aiken/Getty Images)
MANHATTAN, KS - OCTOBER 26: A general field of footballs on the field before a game between the Kansas State Wildcats and Oklahoma Sooners at Bill Snyder Family Football Stadium on October 26, 2019 in Manhattan, Kansas. (Photo by Peter G. Aiken/Getty Images) /
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With two major conferences opting out of fall football, the reduced field of big-time programs has caused a shakeup in the preseason top 25, and Oklahoma football is one of the beneficiaries.

At least three college teams ranked in most everyone’s preseason top-10 projections — Ohio State, Penn State and Oregon — are no longer in the picture with the Big Ten and Pac-12 electing not to play football in the fall because of health and safety concerns over coronavirus exposure.

That leaves 39 schools out of the Big 12, ACC and SEC battling it out for the top 25 spots in both the preseason and final national polls. That’s the way things stand, at least for now, with the Big 12 the only conference to publicly declare it was moving forward with plans to play football this fall.

Stewart Mandel of The Athletic is one of the first to put his foot forward and come out with a revised, reduced top 25, prompted by last week’s cascade of college football headlines regarding who’s in and who’s out for the 2020 college football season. Or you can look at it as phase I of a two-part college season with the opt-out teams saying they are going to attempt to play football in the spring. Quite frankly, that remains to be seen.

Clemson and Alabama remain one and two in Mandel’s revised preseason top 25. Georgia moves into the No. 3 spot previously held by Ohio State when Mandel published his previous preseason top-25 projections in late April. LSU made the biggest jump, advancing to No. 4 from No. 8, and the reigning national champions are followed by Oklahoma.

Rounding out the rest of the revised top 10 are No. 6 Florida, Texas, Texas A&M, Notre Dame and North Carolina.

Here are the bottom 15 teams to make it into Mandel’s corrected edition of the 2020 preseason top 25, with the previous ranking in parenthesis:

11. Cincinnati (20)

12. Central Florida (UCF) (24)

13. Auburn (13)

14. Memphis (21)

15. Iowa State (NR)

16. Louisville (NR)

17. University of Miami (NR)

18. Tennessee (23)

19. Appalachian State (NR)

20. Kentucky (NR)

21. Baylor (NR)

22. Pittsburgh (NR)

23. Kansas State (NR)

24. Virginia (NR)

25. Louisiana Lafayette (NR)

If you’ve been keeping track, five Big 12 teams made the revised projections. Interestingly, Oklahoma was ranked 18th in Mandel’s April preseason rankings, but did not make the revised projections. Eight SEC teams are listed in the revised top 25, the most of any conference, including five in the top 10.

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