Oklahoma football: Sooners a couple of wins from returning to Top 25
By Chip Rouse
Four games into the season, Oklahoma football is in unfamiliar territory.
After beginning the 2020 season ranked No. 3 in the country in the Associated Press Preseason Poll, the Sooners have fallen completely out of the top-25 rankings.
After suffering a stunning home loss to Kansas State — something KSU has done three times at OU since 2012 — the Sooners dropped all the way to No. 19.
OU followed up the K-State loss with another defeat at Iowa State, and after that the Sooners were dropped completely out of the AP rankings. All of this happened over a period of two weeks.
This is the third straight week Oklahoma has not been ranked in the AP Top 25. That may not be a big deal for many college teams, but it is a very big deal for the Oklahoma football program.
Oklahoma Sooners Football
Since the first Associated Press college football poll appeared in 1936, no school has been ranked in the top five more times that Oklahoma. Prior to the Iowa State loss on Oct. 3, the Sooners had been ranked in the AP Top 25 for 64 consecutive weeks dating back to Sept. 25, 2016.
Before this season, Oklahoma had been ranked in 830 of the 1,151 AP polls since 1936. That’s 72 percent of all of the AP college polls. That’s why being ranked as one of the top 25 college programs every season is a huge deal to the Sooner Nation.
And lately, the Sooners and their fans have not been disappointed in that regard. In the last five season, OU has finished no lower than No. 7 in the country, according to the AP final rankings, with an average finish of fifth.
Since the 2000 season, the Sooners have finished the season among the top 25 teams in the AP poll 18 times, and 14 times in the top 10.
Based on the votes received from the 62 media representative who participate every week in the AP college football poll, Oklahoma received the 27th most votes in this week’s poll. By contrast, the Sooners ranks 30th this weeks Coaches Poll, which is made up of a panel of head coaches at FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) schools.
The Sooners are right on the cusp of returning to the top 25, but they are probably a couple of weeks away from reentering the rankings, assuming they can win their next two games, at TCU this weekend and at Texas Tech the following weekend. They could make it back as soon as Sunday, when the next college football rankings are released, but it would take an OU win coupled with a loss by one of the teams ranked 18th or higher.
Oklahoma has two losses. No team currently in the top 25 has more than one loss. There are three Group of Five teams ranked 22 through 25 in the AP poll. A loss by any of the three this weekend probably would be enough to move the Sooners back into the top 25 with a victory.
In the world of coachspeak, you are what your record says you are, and right now the Sooners are no better than a .500 team, which isn’t really deserving of a top-25 ranking.
Oklahoma needs to keep winning, and if it is able to do that, all will take care if itself and the Sooners will be back in familiar territory — or at least within the city limits.
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