Oklahoma football: How coveted would OU be if conferences started over?

Remember all the lauding and loathing that accompanied the announcement a year ago that the Oklahoma football program was taking its 14 Big 12 conference titles and moving to the high-and-mighty SEC?

Fan reaction was all over the board. Some, mostly those in the Sooner Nation, were both excited and a tad anxious by the news about what might lie ahead, knowing OU would now be part of the best football conference in the land. Others were of the mind set what goes around comes around and that the greed of the Sooners and their so-called comrades in arms, the Texas Longhorns, would ultimately doom both programs to mediocrity in the all-powerful SEC.

As the game of musical chairs continues among the conferences at the highest level of college football, one thing is abundantly clear. The division between the “haves and have-nots” will soon become 40 schools and all the rest. No disrespect to the Big 12 or the ACC or what is left of a rapidly collapsing Pac-12.

We’re over a decade into this paradigm shift known as conference realignment, and I’m sure we’re not done yet. It appears that the SEC and the Big Ten have positioned themselves as the ruling entities in the new college football environment, and I don’t think they’re completely done yet in adding new members.

Many view the last 10-12 years of conference reshuffling to be nothing more than a giant money grab. Conferences were originally formed with the idea of geographic proximity and regional rivalries in mind. That no longer holds the same weight in the new world order of conference consolidation and empire building. Teams want to be where they can bring in the most revenue and, conversely, conferences want to admit new members that can add value and increased league revenue.

Some of you may have seen or read about the recent analysis done by staff writer Pat Forde and the staff at Sports Illustrated looking at the desirability and/or value brought to the table by all 69 teams currently in Power 5 conferences or scheduled to make the move by 2023.

The object of the exercise, in the words of Forde, was to formulate what it might look like “if you were to blow up every league and hold a draft to redistribute the balance of power, what (would) your draft board look like?”

Forde and his SI editors realized that this analysis would stir up some controversy and debate. Recognizing this situation, Forde’s article, which you can view in its entirety by clicking here, offered this disclaimer:

"“Sports Illustrated’s Power Five Desirability Ratings — sure to infuriate, possibly to educate. Regardless, this is an attempt to apply some metrics to the debate.”"

The analysis factors five basic elements and a school’s national ranking in each to come up with an aggregate score totaling all of the ranking numbers. As a time parameter, the years 2017-2021 were used in the analysis, discarding the pandemic year 2020.

The five categories that were examined to come up with an ultimate “desirability rating,” as Sports Illustrated termed it, were national ranking (a five-year average of the Sagarin ratings), academic ranking (using U.S. News & World Report’s national universities rankings), all-sports ranking (an average of the Learfield Directors’ Cup NCAA Division I standings), football attendance (NCAA data averaging home-game attendance), and broadcast viewership (total number of football games that drew on million or more viewers.

Adding together the averages or national ranking obtained from each of the five categories, the analysis produced a number representing the value or representative level of desirability of all of the current and future Power 5 schools. The lower the total number the higher the so-called desirability.

Now for the obvious premise of this FanSided article: How do you think the University of Oklahoma came out in this analysis? Oklahoma finished 8th with a total score of 81, which we’ll break down in a moment.

Recognizing that football is the major focus of this evaluation, mainly because that is what is driving all of the conference realignment and consolidation, you might be surprised to learn that OU’s value was higher than that of schools such Alabama. Penn State and Texas A&M.

Now back to how Oklahoma netted out in each of the five measurement criteria, the Sooners ranked fifth over the four years surveyed in the Sagarin national rankings, tied for 52nd in academics, 10th in all sports, 13th in attendance, and — this might surprise you — 1st in broadcast viewership.

We all knew that Oklahoma football is a highly recognized and respected national brand, now we have some numbers to back that up.