Oklahoma football: Sooners may be void of superstars, but don’t be fooled by that

It’s an unusual year when an Oklahoma football roster doesn’t include any preseason All-Americans.

In fact, when the Big 12 announced its 2022 Preseason All-Big 12 Team last month, only one Sooner was named, and he was a specialist, punter Michael Turk. That is in deep contrast to a year earlier, when nine Oklahoma players were selected on the Preseason All-Big 12 unit.

This hit home once again when the ESPN college football staff revealed its top 100 college players for the 2022 season. In past seasons, you would see a handful of players on this list and several likely in the top 25 or 30. Not this year. And you have scroll through almost two-thirds of the list before you find the first Sooner to make the ranked list of names. That player is junior wide-receiver Marvin Mims.

Six names after Mims comes Sooner transfer quarterback Dillon Gabriel at No. 70. That’s it. No other OU players ranked in the ESPN Top 100 of 2022.

That is disheartening in and of itself, but in careful study of the entire list of 100 names, it turns out that Oklahoma isn’t alone with just a couple of players recognized in this list of so-called high-level talent. There is a paucity of Big 12 representatives on the list in general — nine in total, including the two Sooners — two each from OU, Iowa State and Oklahoma State and one from Kansas State.

Once again, the reputed ESPN bias toward teams from the SEC and ACC is stamped all over this ranking of top college football talent. Twenty-three of the first 40 names on the top 100 list are either from the SEC (14) or the ACC (9). And that same trend pretty much holds true over the remaining 60 names on the list.

So, what does all this mean for Oklahoma football this season? If such a ranking was put forth after the season, would it change? Sure it would, because there are always surprises over the course of a full season. Would additional OU players rise up and make the list? Maybe so, but winning seasons and championships aren’t necessarily determined by how many players from a given team are on the list.

Some would misconstrue the paucity of superstar headlines or designations afforded Sooner players before the season starts to mean Oklahoma is in a rebuild year, or at least a down year by Sooner standards. How else should you view a team that lost its head coach, half of coaching staff and a number of key players to the transfer portal as well as the NFL Draft?

This may be the perception of some, but the reality is Oklahoma is still loaded with talent. With the possible exception of Texas, the Sooners are still the most talented team in the Big 12, and beginning in a couple of more weeks they’ll have the opportunity to go out and prove that.

But you still have to be able to play up to, or even exceed, the level of that talent, something that the Sooners have consistently shown they are able to do. And there is every indication through spring practice sessions and into the first two weeks of fall training camp that this is not going to drop off anytime soon, despite all the offseason changes.

The fact that some have OU in the uncharacteristic underdog role this season makes no matter to Brent Venables or the Sooner players. It just makes them hungrier to prove those folks wrong. And that will come about from a full team effort, everyone doing their job to the best of their ability and pulling together as one cohesive unit — not just as an offense, a defense and special teams, but all of it operating as one.

The point of all this is that Gabriel and Mims unquestionably will play a huge role in Oklahoma’s success on the field this season and are truly deserving of recognition as two of the 100 best players heading into the 2022 college football season.

But for Oklahoma to win as many as 10 games for the 41st time in school history, and it will take at least that to potentially win a 15th Big 12 title, it’s going to require contributions from not just, two, four or six others but multiple Sooners on offense, defense and special teams — all performing as one, of course.