Oklahoma football: Where will OU land in first CFP rankings of 2021?

With a 9-0 record and holding down the No. 4 spot in the current national rankings, it would appear Oklahoma football is in good position to make a legitimate run at the 2021 College Football Playoff.

A lot can happen over the next five weeks, though, and as far as the CFP selection committee is concerned, the race to land one of the coveted four playoff spots doesn’t really begin until the ninth or 10th week of the season.

In case you haven’t checked your college football calendar yet, that’s where we’re at this season, and on Tuesday night the 11-member panel of experts tasked with selecting the top four teams for the 2021 College Football Playoff will reveal the first of its six weekly top-25 rankings.

While plenty can and most likely will change between now and Dec. 5, when the final 2021 College Football Playoff rankings are released. the one thing we do know is that the AP poll and CFP rankings probably won’t agree on the top four teams. The two rankings have agreed just twice (2018 and 2020) in the seven-year history of the playoff format.

And only one time (2020) have the same top-four teams in the initial week of the playoff rankings been the same four (regardless of order) that actually advanced to the playoff.

Oklahoma has been a participant in four of the seven College Football Playoffs and is hoping to make its fifth appearance this season. Only Alabama and Clemson (both with six) have made more playoff appearances.

It will be interesting to see where the selection committee places the Sooners when the initial 2021 playoff rankings come out on Tuesday. My best guess is that Oklahoma will start out in the No. 5 spot, although I’ve seen several mock rankings by national pundits that have the Crimson and Cream ranked anywhere from No. 3 to No. 7.

The Sooners are an interesting test case. They are undefeated and own college football’s best record at 9-0, but five of those victories are by seven points or fewer, and they really don’t have a signature win, unlike several other top-four considerations. And until just recently, OU hasn’t performed up to the expectations that most everyone in college football had for them to begin the season.

Oklahoma has destiny in its own hands, however, because it plays the best three teams in the Big 12 over consecutive weekends in November. Two of those opponents, Baylor and Oklahoma State, are ranked in the top 15 this week in both major weekly polls and have a combined overall record of 14-2. Iowa State, the other November opponent for the Sooners, was also nationally ranked until this past weekend.

A case can certainly be made that Oklahoma is a different team — from the one it was in those close games in the first half of the season — since the change was made at quarterback with Caleb Williams replacing Spencer Rattler in Game 6 against Texas. The CFP selection committee should also take that into consideration.

So, regardless of where OU starts out in the playoff rankings, the Sooners have every opportunity to erase all of the concerns from the first half of the season by successfully navigating their arduous November schedule and then winning a seventh straight Big 12 championship.

A difficult challenge? No question. Out of the question? Certainly not. We’ve seen this before from Oklahoma. And as supporting evidence: The Sooners are 24-0 in the month of November since 2014.

Oklahoma’s string of success during championship November, plus capturing six consecutive conference championships, has enabled the Sooners to advance well forward from where they started out in the first CFP rankings of the season every year since 2015. OU has never been ranked higher than No. 5 (in 2017) in the initial playoff rankings.

The Sooners’ biggest advancement in the playoff rankings, from where they started out to where they finished — was in 2015. OU was ranked No. 15 when the rankings debuted in late October that season, but worked up all the way to No. 4 and the final playoff spot when the final rankings were released.

Of course making the playoffs is just a secondary goal for Lincoln Riley and Oklahoma this season. The Sooners aren’t going to be satisfied just to get there. They have their eye on the ultimate prize: winning a game and advancing to and winning the national championship.

No matter where Oklahoma lands in Tuesday night’s playoff rankings, all that they have worked for is still straight out in front of them.

Keep winning and advance…