Oklahoma football: Not all experts have written off Sooners
By Chip Rouse
Contrary to what some would have you believe, the Oklahoma football season is not over after one loss.
Oklahoma’s stunning loss to Kansas State drew plenty of national attention, as you might expect when a 28-point favorite goes down at home. It certainly caught the attention of FOX Sports college football studio analyst Urban Meyer, who called the Sooners “done” after the loss to Kansas State.
If any team in the country knows how to respond to a regular-season loss and turn around its season, it’s Oklahoma. And there’s plenty of evidence to demonstrate that.
The Sooners have lost regular-season games to Iowa State, Texas and Kansas State in each of the past three seasons, and all three times they proceeded to run the table in their remaining games, including a win in the Big 12 Championship, and earn a spot in the College Football Playoff.
That doesn’t necessarily mean they will do the same in this not-business-as-normal college football season — with COVID-19 threatening to disrupt further an already sideways season — but it also doesn’t mean they won’t.
The month of October will go a long ways toward determining what kind of season will have in 2020? The next four weeks are easily the most difficult stretch in OU’s 2020 schedule.
In addition to the annual Red River Showdown with Texas, the Sooners have games at Iowa State this coming weekend, at TCU and at Texas Tech before playing their next game at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, which won’t be for over a month from now, on Nov. 7 against Kansas.
Looking ahead to the games the Sooners still have in front of them, it’s difficult to imagine they won’t lose at least one more game, and possibly two, but at least two national college experts still believe Lincoln Riley’s Oklahoma team has it in them to take care of business and be standing tall at season’s end, as has been their good fortune the last three years.
At this time a week ago, both Mark Schlabach and Kyle Bonagura of ESPN as one of the four teams making it into this year’s College Football Playoff. That is not the case this week, of course.
However, both Schlabach and Bonagura pick the Sooners to play in one of the four other New Year’s Six bowls. This week in ESPN’s Week 4 college football bowl projections, Schlabach has Oklahoma playing Central Florida, coached by former OU player and offensive coordinator Josh Heupel, in the PlayStation Fiesta Bowl. Meanwhile, his ESPN colleague Bonagura has the Sooners going up against Notre Dame in the Capital One Orange Bowl.
See, there’s still hope on the plains and on the horizon.