Oklahoma football: Five ways 2021 will be national championship year
By Chip Rouse
The Oklahoma football programs ranks fourth all-time with seven national championships in what is considered the modern era of college football (end of World War to the present).
But the Sooners have not added a national championship trophy to the trophy case in the Barry Switzer Center in 21 years.
OU has come close a number of times during the past two decades, but hasn’t been able to finish the job. Bob Stoops’ teams played in three BCS national championship games in the eight years after the 2000 national championship season only to come up short all three times, and Lincoln Riley has made it to three College Football Playoffs in his four season as head coach but hasn’t been able to get beyond the first game.
That’s six times since 2000 that the Sooners have been in a position to play for and win another national crown. Most every school in the country not named Alabama, Clemson or Ohio State would give anything to be in that position. The problem is, no one remembers who finishes second, third or fourth. It’s the national champion that gets all the attention and the historical citations.
Oklahoma is ranked in the top four by most all of the 2021 preseason college football preview publications and preseason media polls and several national sources have the Sooners No. 1 or 2 to begin the 2021 season, including a No. 2 ranking in the Associated Press Preseason Top-25 poll released this week.
Of course, no team ever won a national championship without playing a game, and we all know it’s not how you start but how you finish that counts.
A number of college football pundits and purveyors of the future have said that the 2021 Oklahoma team is Riley’s best chance yet to finally get over the hump and reel in that elusive eighth national crown. At the same time, there are still some critics who concede that the Sooners will again be good, but contend that OU doesn’t yet have the completeness it takes to take down an SEC, ACC or Big Ten champion.
Granted, the Sooners’ recent history is the baggage Oklahoma must bear until it proves otherwise. What follows are the five reasons we believe the 2021 edition of OU football will finally bring home the bacon this season in the form of an eighth national championship. And, ironically, after a 21-year absence as the final team standing.