Oklahoma football: Sooners one of a few legit national contenders
By Chip Rouse
Oklahoma football is in a select group of teams that legitimately has any real chance of contending for a national championship — this year, or any year, for that matter.
Every college team starts the year with the dream of playing for a championship. For all but about a dozen schools, however, a conference or divisional championship is as far as their hopes or dreams can realistically reach.
The reality is, only the teams that consistently recruit at the highest talent level have any real chance of playing for the college football national championship.
Some of you may be familiar with the college football concept “Blue-Chip Ratio.” If not, this is a term Sooner fans will be interested in knowing about.
Oklahoma Sooners Football
The Blue-Chip Ratio is a metric devised by Bud Elliott of 247Sports that measures the number of five- and four-star recruits — or, “blue chips” — in a given team’s recruiting classes over a four-year span. That number is compared with the number of three- and two-star recruits over the previous four years.
What he has found is, teams that win the national championship in college football are the teams that recruit more four- and five-star recruits than two- and three-stars over the previous four signing classes.
Another way of saying this is, teams with less than 50-percent blue-chip signees over the previous four recruiting cycles cannot be considered national title contenders, according to Elliott’s Blue-Chip Ratio.
Oklahoma’s Blue-Chip Ratio for 2021 is 66 percent, which ranks them No. 5, tied with LSU and Texas, among the 16 best teams with a realistic chance for the national championship this season.
Again, what this means is, the number of five-and four-star recruits in Oklahoma’s last four recruiting classes was 66 percent of the total number of signees over the past four cycles.
Alabama (84 percent), Georgia (80 percent), Ohio State (79 percent) and Clemson (67 percent) rank ahead of the Sooners, based on Elliott’s 2021 Blue-Chip Ratio calculation.
The Sooners’ BCR standing has increased in each of the last two years. OU’s 2019 Blue-Chip Ratio was 60 percent (11 out of 15); in 2021, Oklahoma was at 63 percent in 2020 (tied for 5th out of 16).
When you look at the 16 schools whose Blue-Chip Ratio exceeded 50 percent over the previous four recruiting classes, it is generally the same grouping you will see among the top 15 or so schools in the recruiting class rankings every year.
It is good to see two Big 12 schools ranked in the upper tier of this year’s BCR rankings. Although Texas would appear to be an anomaly insofar as the theory that the more five- and four-star recruits you have, the better your chances of winning a national championship.
Excluding Texas’ 2021 recruiting class, the Longhorns have averaged 9.75 in the previous four 247Sports national recruiting class rankings. Over that same period, they have ranked no higher than N. 15 in the final College Football Playoff rankings and were left out of the final CFP top-25 ranking in two of the four years.
Bottom line: Oklahoma does a much better job developing the top talent it brings in. This is further evidenced by the fact that OU has won six consecutive Big 12 championships. Texas’ average conference finish over those same six years is 4.17.