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Oklahoma football: Sooners start out at No. 3 in Coaches Poll

By Chip Rouse

Oct 12, 2019; Dallas, TX, USA; Oklahoma Sooners fans hold up the number one prior to the game against the Texas Longhorns at Cotton Bowl. Mandatory Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports
Oct 12, 2019; Dallas, TX, USA; Oklahoma Sooners fans hold up the number one prior to the game against the Texas Longhorns at Cotton Bowl. Mandatory Credit: Matthew Emmons-USA TODAY Sports /
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The 65 FBS college head coaches that make up the voting panel for the Amway Coaches Poll join Sooner Nation with high expectations for 2021 Oklahoma football.

The USA Today/AFCA 2021 Preseason Coaches Poll, released on Tuesday, has the Sooners starting the new season in the No. 3 position, behind Alabama and Clemson and ahead of Ohio State and Georgia,

The top five features the teams that have started the season at the top of the rankings practically every year, albeit in a little different order, for a good part of the past decade.

Alabama received 63 of the 65 first-place votes. The Sooners received the remaining two. For the record, those two first-place votes for OU came from someone other than Lincoln Riley, who is not one of the participating coaches in this poll.

With returning starting quarterback Spencer Rattler, the preseason favorite to win the 2021 Heisman Trophy and leading one of the most prolific offenses in college football, plus a much-improved defense that some analysts believe could be the best the Sooners have had since the early 2000s, Oklahoma has received a top-four projection for the coming season from practically every preseason poll and college football preview publication. The ranking by the coaches mirrors that consensus.

Over the last 10 seasons, Oklahoma has been ranked No. 4 or higher five times in the preseason Coaches Poll issued in August every year. The Sooners’ average preseason ranking in the Coaches Poll the last 10 seasons has been 7.2.  Five times in the past decade OU equaled or exceeded its preseason Coaches Poll ranking, and five times the Sooners ended the season with a lower ranking.

The widest margin in where the Crimson and Cream started the season and where if finished in the last decade was in 2014. That year, OU was ranked No. 3 by the coaches to start the season, but ended up outside of the top 25 at what would have been No. 35.

Three other Big 12 teams are ranked in the Coaches Poll Preseason Top 25. Iowa State, expected to be Oklahoma’s biggest challenger for a seventh consecutive Big 12 championship and 15th in the Big 12 era, is ranked No. 8, Texas, which along with the Sooners will be moving to the SEC sometime between next season and 2025, is No. 19 and Oklahoma State No. 22.

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