Oklahoma football: Extra points leading up to Big 12 showdown
By Chip Rouse
This is the fifth weekend off in a most unusual Oklahoma football season.
A normal college football season might see two bye weeks at most on the schedule. But as everyone on the planet knows, there is nothing normal about 2020.
Oklahoma is 3-1 this season when having an extra week to prepare for an opponent.
With the cancellation of the Oklahoma-West Virginia game, after two separate attempts to get the game in, the Sooners played a total of eight conference games this season. The last time they played fewer than nine conference games in a season was in 1995, with OU going 2-5 in the final year of the Big Eight Conference.
Adding to the strange nature of the 2020 college football season, Oklahoma did not play a single game at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium during the month of October. There was a 42-day span between the Sooners’ Sept. 26 home game against Kansas State and the next home game on the schedule, which was Nov. 5 against Kansas.
The 42 days between home games this season is tied for the longest in program history. You have to go back to 1987 for the last time the Sooners played away from home for that length of time.
OU misses out on 5-star wide receiver Emeka Egbuka
The Sooners were hopeful they could land Emeka Egbuka, the country’s No, 1 wide receiver in the 2021 recruiting class, but on Friday night, the Washington state native announced his commitment to Ohio State.
OU coaches were hoping that an unofficial visit by Egbuka to OU last weekend might be enough to get him to pick the Sooners. While visiting OU, Egbuka was able to meet up with Oklahoma’s top 2021 recruit, QB Caleb Williams, rated as the top quarterback in the 2021 recruiting cycle, who was also in Norman last weekend. Williams had contacted several top prospects and invited them to join him in Norman and attend the OU-Baylor game.
Egbuka has long been considered favoring Ohio State, but he also had Oklahoma and Washington in his final three.
"“It was really close across the board between Ohio State, Washington and Oklahoma,” Egbuka told ESPN staff writer Tom VanHaaren. “I wanted to get down to Oklahoma to leave no stone unturned before I made my decision.“I loved Oklahoma when I visited and I was high on (the Sooners) when I got back home,” he said, but without any bias I wanted to sit back down and see what would be the best place for me.”"
He obviously came to the conclusion that Ohio State was where he needed to be. Probably not a bad decision given the Buckeyes history and tradition and the fact that they currently have the No. 2-ranked 2021 recruiting class.
Early national signing day is Wednesday (Dec. 16)
Oklahoma missed out on top prospect Emeka Egbuka, but the Sooners are finalists for several other top prospects we will be following closely next week. The Sooners, along with a lot of extra help from No. 1 2021 QB recruit and Sooner commitment Caleb Williams, have been working hard to land 5-star offensive tackle Tristan Leigh.
OU is also in a lead position, according to several college recruiting experts, to reel in a couple of other highly regarded offensive linemen: Bryce Foster and Savion Byrd, both rated five stars
Running back Camar Wheaton, a top-5 national prospect across the board, is also in the Sooners’ crosshairs.
And, just for the record, it is not unheard of to see some commitment flips from other schools during both the early and February signing periods., Verbal commitment are merely pledges and are not legally binding. It isn’t formally binding until a recruit signs a National Letter of Intent.
Oklahoma’s pattern of season-closing finishes have been unmatched
Anyone who is surprised that Oklahoma put together a six-game winning streak to close out the regular season this year after losing its first two Big 12 games shouldn’t be. The Sooners have put together similar win streaks in each of the last five seasons. Since the 2015 season, not coincidentally Lincoln Riley’s first at OU, the Sooners have won at least five consecutive games leading into their postseason bowl appearance.
Oklahoma won seven straight games in 2015 before its College Football Playoff loss to Clemson. The Sooners won nine straight in 2016 before facing Auburn in the Sugar Bowl (which they also won); eight consecutive games in 2017 prior to a two-overtime loss to Georgia in the College Football Playoff’ seven in 2018 before a CFP loss to No. 1 Alabama, and five in 2019 before being run over by national champion LSU in OU’s third consecutive Playoff appearance.
One more win give Lincoln Riley most by an OU coach in first four seasons
With one more Oklahoma win this season, Lincoln Riley will post his 44th win in four seasons as the Sooners head coach. That will be one more win than Bob Stoops achieved in his first four seasons as head coach (1999-2002).
Stoops, the winningest coach in OU football history was 43-9 after four seasons at Oklahoma. Riley is currently 43-8 with at least two more games to go this season. With 44 wins in his first four seasons, Riley will set a new program record for the most wins in the first four years by a Sooner head coach