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Oklahoma football: USA Today places OU in top 10 in early 2022 rankings

By Chip Rouse

Dec 7, 2019; Arlington, TX, USA; Oklahoma Sooners fans during the second half against the Baylor Bears in the 2019 Big 12 Championship Game at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports
Dec 7, 2019; Arlington, TX, USA; Oklahoma Sooners fans during the second half against the Baylor Bears in the 2019 Big 12 Championship Game at AT&T Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-USA TODAY Sports /
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No one seems really sure how the Oklahoma football program will perform next season given the coaching transition and all the changes in process under with new head man Brent Venables.

The way-too-early college football top-25 projections for the 2022 season began coming out this week, right on cue now that the final game of the 2021 season is now in the books. With nothing left to preview, debate or forecast in the ’21 season, all attention is directed forward with projections on what the pecking order will look like when the curtain goes up on the next college football campaign.

USA Today and Sporting News have joined the too-early parade since we reported on this subject earlier this week, and their outlook for the Sooners in 2022 couldn’t be more different. The one thing they did agree on — as have all of the way-too-early college football projections so far — is that Oklahoma is a Top 25 team.

USA Today’s college football staff ranks the Sooners as the No. 6 team heading into the 2022 season. Sporting News, however, takes the longer view, projecting OU at No. 16. Athlon Sports also has come out with its too-early 2022 top 25 and has Oklahoma in the No. 9 spot.

What’s particularly interesting about the Athlon 2022 preview is: Oklahoma is No. 9 in the top-25 projection, ahead of Baylor at No. 11. Yet, Athlon picks Baylor to win the Big 12 for a second straight season with OU as runner-up.

Typically, you don’t see that much contrast among the teams considered to be among the 25 best in the country. One media outlet, The Athletic, did project the Sooners in the Top 25, but had them all the way down to the 25th and bottom rung on the ladder.

Sporting News has taken this analysis a step further by combining all the way-too-early projections for next season into a single composite. In preparing the composite, the staff at Sporting News incorporated an inverse scoring system, assigning 25 points for a No. 1 pick, 24 for No. 2, and so on.

Outlets included are ESPN, Sports Illustrated, The Athletic, CBS Sports, Yahoo Sports, 247Sports, and Athlon. Notably, USA Today is not included. The composite was put together before USA Today issued its way-too-early 2022 top 25.

This is the way the too-early top 10 shakes out combining eight of the top-25 media projections for next college football season:

  1. Alabama
  2. Ohio State
  3. Georgia
  4. Texas A&M
  5. Clemson
  6. Notre Dame
  7. Utah
  8. Michigan
  9. Baylor
  10. Wake Forest
  11. Oklahoma

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