Oklahoma football No. 2 behind Bama in ESPN 2021 Power Index
By Chip Rouse
The widespread belief that this could be Oklahoma football coach Lincoln Riley’s best chance yet to reach the college football summit has some new supporting material.
The first look at ESPN’s 2021 College Football Power Index positions the Sooners in the No. 2 spot right behind top-ranked Alabama. Clemson is third, and the team in the No. 4 spot might surprise you — it’s the Iowa State Cyclones. Ohio State follows Iowa State at No. 5.
According to the FPI, Oklahoma is catching perennial national championship contenders Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State at a very good time. While those three powerhouse teams will be breaking in new starting quarterbacks this season, OU welcomes back second-year starter Spencer Rattler, who led all freshman quarterbacks among FBS teams last season.
In addition, Rattler will have back virtually all of his pass-catching weapons, several of whom were five-star recruits, from 2020, most of the offensive line, a strong running back contingent and a defense with the potential of being a top-20 unit nationally in 2021.
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“Returning talent is a crucial factor for FPI and a returning (good) quarterback is the best preseason positional asset a team can have,: writes Seth Walder of ESPN analytics.
"“All of that together not only makes Oklahoma the second best team behind Alabama,” he says, “but it gives the Sooners the second best chance of (making) the Playoffs (73 percent) and the second best shot at winning the national championship (26 percent).”"
Watch out for Iowa State
According to the FPI, the Sooners can expect a serious challenge for all the marbles from a couple of potential top-10 teams from within their own conference, most notably the Cyclones of Iowa State.
FPI gives Iowa State a 28.8 percent chance of winning the Big 12 in 2021, compared to 61.7 percent for Oklahoma, and a 40.6 percent chance of making it into the College Playoff.
By the way, Oklahoma plays Iowa State in Norman this season in the final home game of the season on Nov. 20. That is followed by Bedlam, at Oklahoma State this year, in the regular-season finale on Nov. 27.
Four other Big 12 teams are ranked among the top-25 teams heading into the 2021 season, according to the FPI projections. Oklahoma State is No. 9, with a four percent chance of winning the Big 12 and a five percent chance of making the Playoff. Texas is at No. 12, with less than a three percent chance of winning the Big 12 or making the Playoff.
TCU is No. 19 in ESPN’s first 2021 Power Index, Texas Tech comes in 21st and West Virginia is 24th, all three of which have virtually no chance of winning the conference or making the Playoff, according to ESPN analytics.
Since Riley arrived in Norman as part of the Oklahoma coaching staff in 2015, the Sooners have made four College Football Playoff appearances. Three of those appearances came in his first three season as head coach of the Sooners. Only Alabama and Clemson have been to the College Football Playoff more times than Oklahoma since that national championship format was introduced in 2014.
While four CFP appearance in six seasons is clearly impressive, the only thing that really matters once you make it there is getting past the semifinal round and playing for the national championship and the good fortune of being the last team standing.
OU’s problem hasn’t been getting to the CFP, but winning once there
Oklahoma is 0-for-4 in its four trips to the Playoff and still looking for its first Playoff win. In fact, in eight total appearances in the BCS National Championship and the College Football Playoff, the Sooners have just one win (in 2000, when they won the school’s seventh national championship).
You can understand why fans of Oklahoma football — and there are hundreds of thousands of them, not just in the state of Oklahoma but all across the country — are particularly uplifted by all the expert talk and early projections that this could finally be the year that their beloved Sooners not just get to the Playoff, but get that first Playoff win and possibly more.
The ESPN Football Power Index offers a different measure of a team’s strength than the traditional top-25 weekly rankings. For one thing, the more conventional weekly polls provide a subjective measure of a team’s performance to date, while the FPI offers a prospective view based on computer modeling.
The Associated Press and Coaches Top-25 polls — often referred to as the human polls because of how and from whom the rankings are derived — evaluate a team’s week-to-week performance over the course of a season. The FPI, by contrast, measures a team’s strength based on how it is projected to perform over the remainder of the season — or, in this case, the full season.
Most of the way-too-early preseason top-25 rankings for the 2021 college football season have Oklahoma Nos. 3 or 4, depending on which source you reference. So the slight upgrade in the ESPN Power Index not only is in alignment with what many experts around the country are thinking, but sweet music to the ears of Sooner fans.