Oklahoma football: Sooner bowl projections all over the map

The Oklahoma football options from here on out in the 2021 season are crystal clear.

Win Bedlam and the Sooners are in the Big 12 Championship game for the fifth straight season with a chance to win a seventh straight conference crown. Lose to Oklahoma State in Bedlam on Saturday and OU’s next game will be a lesser postseason bowl in late December as the Big 12’s third best team.

OU could actually lose Bedlam and still make into the Big 12 Championship, but that would require Baylor to lose earlier in the day at home against Texas Tech, against whom the Bears are two-touchdown favorites.

By the time the Sooners kick off against Oklahoma State (6:30 p.m. CT) they will know the outcome of the Baylor-Texas Tech game and know exactly what is required of them to get to the Big 12 Championship.

For the first time this season, Oklahoma heads into its season finale on the road at Oklahoma State as an underdog (-4.0) and the lower-ranked team (No. 10) than its in-state rival. Oklahoma State is No. 7 this week in the Associated Press rankings.

Oklahoma State may be favored in the 2021 edition of Bedlam, but the Sooners have won 17 of the last 21 games against the Cowboys of OSU and eight of the last 10 meetings. Also of note in this longtime rivalry series, the higher-ranked team has not always come out the victor, nor has home field proved an advantage. Oklahoma has won the last four games played in Stillwater.

Saturday’s Bedlam matchup, the 116th game in the series that began in 1904, marks the 10th time since the 2000 season that both Oklahoma and Oklahoma State are nationally ranked, but only the fourth time over that span that the Sooners have been the lower ranked team.

Here’s a glass-half-full fact for Sooner fans to ponder in the buildup to Saturday’s game: Only three times in the last 21 meetings between OU and OSU has Oklahoma been the underdog. Two of those games were at Oklahoma State (2010 and 2013) and one in Norman (2020). The Sooners prevailed in all three games (more on that later this week).

So is history on the Sooners’ side and destined to repeat itself this weekend? We’ll have to wait a few days on that one, but it is certainly a reasonable and comforting thought.

If the Sooners win on Saturday night in Stillwater they will automatically advance to the Big 12 title game as the No. 1 seed and a rematch against the same Oklahoma State team. Regardless of what happens in the rematch, if the Sooners don’t earn a berth in the College Football Playoff as the Big 12 champion, they still will have a good shot at a New Year’s Six bowl as a 10-2 team.

If OU doesn’t get a New Year’s Six bowl (either the Sugar or Fiesta Bowl), the Crimson and Cream will represent the Big 12 in the Valero Alamo Bowl in San Antonio.

As of Sunday, CBS Sports, USA Today and Sporting News were all still projecting Oklahoma to win the Big 12 and go to the Sugar Bowl to play probably the second or third best team in the SEC. Brett McMurphy of The Action Network, however, has the Sooners headed to the Alamo Bowl as the No. 3 team in the Big 12.

An Everest-like climb ahead for sure for an inconsistent group of Sooners having to go up against one of the best teams in the country in a rivalry matchup and having to win not just once but twice to consider it a successful season by OU standards.