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Oklahoma football a ‘top-tier’ program, according to ESPN

By Chip Rouse

Dec 30, 2020; Arlington, TX, USA; Oklahoma Sooners head coach Lincoln Riley lifts the Cotton Bowl trophy after the game against the Florida Gators at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
Dec 30, 2020; Arlington, TX, USA; Oklahoma Sooners head coach Lincoln Riley lifts the Cotton Bowl trophy after the game against the Florida Gators at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports /
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The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, better known as ESPN, has never been accused of an Oklahoma football bias. Au contraire.

Sooner football games do air on ESPN broadcast and streaming platforms, because of the media contract between the Big 12 and ESPN, but you certainly won’t find any of the announcers, analysts or studio hosts throwing much praise the way of the Sooners.

Call it East Coast bias (the network is headquartered in Bristol, Connecticut, after all), SEC bias, or whatever. The point is, when ESPN has something truly exalted to say or associate with Oklahoma football it is an Extra! Extra! kind of day.

In case you missed it, or are just now hearing about it, ESPN staff writer David Hale has an article this week about taking a different approach in the way college football teams are ranked. Instead of the more conventional means of ranking teams ordinally (1-25, 1-50, etc.), Hale offers a different way of separating out the quality level of the teams.

Oklahoma Sooners Football
Oklahoma Sooners Football /

Oklahoma Sooners Football

Hale suggests there may or may not be much difference between teams ranked 4 and 5, 10 and 11 or 25 and 26. but grouping teams in tiers is a way of breaking down who’s really good, who’s up and coming or on the brink of being really good, who’s a step or level below that…all the way down to which teams are simply awaiting their next participation trophy.

Looking ahead to the 2021 season, Hale and his cronies at ESPN have broken down all 130 FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) teams into 10 cleverly labeled tiers or levels. You can scroll through the various tiers yourself, but suffice it to say, the top level is labeled “Championship favorites”; levels 9 and 10 are simply “Yikes,” and “UConn and Kansas,” respectively.

Spoiler alert: Oklahoma is one of five teams — Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State and Georgia are the others — Hale places in “Championship favorites,” the top tier of all teams, for 2021.

“In the Playoff era,” Hale writes, (only) four teams have won at least 80 percent of their games: Alabama (.919), Ohio State (.901), Clemson (.899) and Oklahoma (.815).”

Those same four teams represent 20 of the 28 College Football Playoff participants in the seven years that format has been in existence.

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