Oklahoma football: Sooners surprise with No. 6 College Playoff ranking
By Chip Rouse
Oklahoma football missed out on the College Football Playoff this season, but they are the subject of controversy once again as No. 6 in the final CFP rankings.
The Sooners moved up four spots from the No. 10 spot they held in the penultimate Playoff rankings issued last Tuesday, passing Cincinnati, Georgia, Florida and Iowa State, all of whom ranked above them less than a week ago.
That earned Oklahoma, as the Big 12 champion, a spot in one of New Year’s Six bowls. The Sooners are headed back to AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, for the Cotton Bowl Classic on Dec. 30, where they will face No. 7 Florida.
Most college football experts were expecting undefeated Cincinnati, 9-0 and champions of the American Athletic Association to be the No. 6 team behind Texas A&M in the final CFP rankings. Georgia, a two-loss team like OU, was also a strong consideration.
But the Playoff selection committee apparently placed more weight on the Sooners winning the rematch against a higher-ranked Iowa State team that had beaten OU earlier in the season, as well as the eye test, crediting the Sooners’ seven consecutive wins since starting out 1-2 as a testament to how much stronger Oklahoma has gotten as the season progressed.
This is the third straight year that an Oklahoma team has surprised a lot of people with where it finished in the College Football Playoff rankings. In each of the previous two years, the Sooners have come from outside of the top four teams in the next to last unveiling of the rankings to wiggle their way into the final four teams vying for national supremacy.
In both 2018 and 2019, OU was awarded the No. 4 seed, and that in itself sparked a great deal of controversy because of the team(s) the Sooners jumped in the process and were left out of the Playoff.
You could easily argue that the 2020 version of Oklahoma football is a more complete team, and therefore a more representative championship contender, than the four previous Oklahoma Playoff teams. When you consider that perspective, perhaps it shouldn’t be that surprising that the selection committee moved the Sooners up four spots in the final 2020 CFP rankings.
Oklahoma’s seven consecutive wins heading into the postseason makes it six consecutive seasons in which the Sooners have taken at least a five-game end-of-season winning streak into their postseason game.
Oklahoma and Florida have played each other just one time previously in football. Quarterbacked by Tim Tebow and coached by Urban Meyer, the No. 2 Gators defeated Sam Bradford and the top-ranked Sooners, coached by former Florida assistant Bob Stoops, 24-14 in the 2009 BCS National Championship