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Oklahoma football: What the Big 12 should stack up like in 2021 season

By Chip Rouse

Sep 4, 2021; Norman, Oklahoma, USA; Oklahoma Sooners wide receiver Mario Williams (4) runs with the ball as Tulane Green Wave defensive back Jadon Canady (28) defends during the first quarter at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
Sep 4, 2021; Norman, Oklahoma, USA; Oklahoma Sooners wide receiver Mario Williams (4) runs with the ball as Tulane Green Wave defensive back Jadon Canady (28) defends during the first quarter at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports /
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The new Oklahoma football season got off to a somewhat shaky start, but the Big 12 as a whole rolled up nine wins and just a single loss.

OU and Iowa State, the two Big 12 preseason favorites, surprised most experts with two of the lowest-margin victories, while Texas, under new head coach Steve Sarkisian, and TCU, with the conference’s longest tenured head coach, Gary Patterson, rolled over their season-opening opponents by 30 and 42 points, respectively.

West Virginia was the only Big 12 team that found itself on the losing end after last weekend’s official kickoff to the 2021 season. The Mountaineers fell 30-24 on the road at Maryland.

The competitive challenge ramps up for at least a couple Big 12 teams this coming weekend: No. 9 Iowa State hosts No. 10 Iowa, and No. 15 Texas plays Arkansas in Fayetteville.

Oklahoma might have the best path to the Big 12 Championship, getting to play Iowa State at home and Texas on a neutral field in Dallas in the annual Red River rivalry game. But the Sooners do have difficult road assignments at Kansas State and at Oklahoma State.

In an exercise to forecast what the Big 12 standings will look like at the end of the 12-game, regular-season, I predicted the outcome for every game on the Big 12 schedule for the 2021 season. This is what I came up with (with the Big 12 Preseason Media Poll results in parentheses):

                                                                        Conf.       All

  1. Oklahoma Sooners (1)                    9-0       12-0
  2. Iowa State Cyclones (2)                  8-1       11-1
  3. Texas Longhorns (3)                        7-2       10-2
  4. Oklahoma State Cowboys (4)       5-4         7-5
  5. Kansas State Wildcats (7)             4-5         7-5
  6. W.V. Mountaineers (6)                    4-5         5-7
  7. TCU Horned Frogs (5)                     3-6         6-6
  8. Texas Tech Red Raiders (9)           3-6         5-7
  9. Baylor Bears (8)                               2-7         4-8
  10. Kansas Jayhawks (10)                    0-9         1-11

I’ll actually take this a step further and predict that Oklahoma will beat Iowa State a second time, in the Big 12 Championship game, to win a seventh conference championship. I’m not prepared this early in the season to predict a score in the championship game, but I will go as far to say that the Sooners will win by 10 or more points.

At the end of the regular season, we’ll have some fun — or maybe not — by looking back to see how these projections compare to the actual results.

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