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Oklahoma football: A voice favoring 2022 Sooners to reclaim conference crown

By Chip Rouse

NORMAN, OK - SEPTEMBER 18: The Oklahoma Sooners run onto the field for a game against the Nebraska Cornhuskers at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on September 18, 2021 in Norman, Oklahoma. Oklahoma won 23-16. (Photo by Brian Bahr/Getty Images)
NORMAN, OK - SEPTEMBER 18: The Oklahoma Sooners run onto the field for a game against the Nebraska Cornhuskers at Gaylord Family Oklahoma Memorial Stadium on September 18, 2021 in Norman, Oklahoma. Oklahoma won 23-16. (Photo by Brian Bahr/Getty Images) /
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No one outside of Sooner Nation is quite sure what to make of Oklahoma football for the coming season, but folks at one college football publication believe OU will be back in familiar territory come the end of Brent Venables’ first season at the helm.

College Football News projects that the Sooners will be at the top of the Big 12 standings at the end of the 2022 season.

Three Big 12 teams, including Oklahoma, will begin the next college football season with new head coaches. Although Venables isn’t new to Oklahoma or the Big 12, this will be his first time as a head coach after serving 13 seasons at OU as a defensive coordinator under Bob Stoops and a decade as the defensive architect at Clemson.

Venables was part of one national championship and four national championship games at Oklahoma and two national championships and four national championship games with Clemson.

The new Oklahoma head coach also knows a thing or two about winning conference championships. At OU he was part of eight Big 12 titles (five outright) previously, and at Clemson the number was six (four outright).

The staff at CFN believes the Sooners’ chief challengers in the coming season will be OU’s top rivals, Oklahoma State and Texas, but gives the nod to the Sooners as the last team standing when all the dust settles. In something of a surprise, the publication projects reigning conference champion Baylor to finish sixth behind OU. OSU, Texas, Iowa State and TCU.

Here is what CFN had to say about Oklahoma in the coming season:

“As long as the Sooners win at Nebraska and can get by Texas, there’s a great shot at starting 7-0 before getting a week off (ahead of an Oct. 27 Thursday night game at Iowa State).

“There will be a few misfires along the way, but the team will be talented enough — and the schedule is just good enough — to at least assume 10 wins.”

Having arguably the most experienced, if not the best, quarterback in the Big 12 in transfer Dillon Gabriel in the coming season is an important plus in the vote of confidence the CFN staff is giving to 2022 edition of Sooner football. With Gabriel as the starting quarterback at UCF in the 2019 season, the Knights ranked second in the FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) in total offense, averaging 540.5 yards per game.

In the coming season, Gabriel, the sixth starting quarterback at OU in the same number of seasons, will have even more talented offensive weapons than he had at UCF.

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