Oklahoma football: ESPN lays the hammer on Oklahoma again
By Chip Rouse
It’s brutally obvious that the folks at ESPN who put together the weekly college football power rankings didn’t think much of the Oklahoma football sleepwalk in its 30-point win over Kent State on Saturday.
On a Saturday when seven top-25 teams lost, it was the Sooners that took one of the biggest hits in the national rankings, at least according to the so-called college football experts who work for ESPN.
After Oklahoma struggled through the first half scoring just seven points — coming in the final 18 seconds of the half — and managing just 7 rushing yards in the first 30 minutes — red flags went up in certain parts of the college football universe that the Sooners weren’t the team everyone thought they were heading into the 2022 season.
The reality is, the Sooners rebounded with 26 unanswered points in the second half and cruised to a 33-3 victory. They failed by three points, however, to cover the spread.
While the typically high-powered OU offense had trouble getting much traction right out of the shoot, the oft-criticized Sooner defense stood strong throughout the game. The latter is definitely a giant plus for this Oklahoma team going forward this season.
A week ago, after the Sooners dismantled UTEP 45-13 in Brent Venables’ debut as the 23rd head coach of the historic Oklahoma football program, the ESPN College Football Power Rankings had the Sooners at No. 4 in the country. Admittedly, that might have been a tad high.
But it’s almost as if ESPN overcorrected itself in its Week 2 power rankings, because OU dropped all the way down to No. 15 despite its 30-point win over a Kent State team that is better than UTEP.
An 11-point drop is bad enough, but the teams ranked ahead of the 2-0 Sooners in this week’s ESPN rankings is like rubbing salt in an open wound. Texas jumped from 23rd to No. 6. It’s true that the Longhorns played a whale of a game and looked impressive, at least defensively, in their one-point loss at home to top-ranked Alabama, but do they deserve to be elevated that high above OU?
Then there are one-loss Baylor, LSU and Utah, all ranked higher than OU at 14, 12 and 10, respectively.
And the ultimate slap in the face: Lincoln Riley’s USC Trojans, although more deserving than the three one-loss teams ranked ahead of Oklahoma, is up to No. 8, seven spots higher than the Sooners.
It’s also interesting to note the wide disparity between both the Associated Press and Coaches Poll Week 3 rankings and the one released by the ESPN college football staff and/or computers.
Who do you believe?