Oklahoma football: OU’s trajectory upward in ESPN Playoff Predictor
By Chip Rouse
Every week for the past eight years during the college and Oklahoma football season, the ESPN computers have been whirling away ginning out the percentages of the top teams’ chances of making that season’s College Football Playoff.
The teams with the highest probability of making the playoff are listed in ranked order as part of the ESPN/Allstate College Football Playoff Predictor. This is one of several sources in the sports media landscape that stir up the narrative throughout the college football season and make it fun for fans to follow their favorite teams, especially those good enough to be considered national title contenders.
Georgia, Alabama and Ohio State have run off and well-distanced themselves from all the other legitimate contenders. Up until this week, all three were above 70 percent in their predictability to make the playoff this season. Never before in the eight-year history of ESPN’s CFP Predictor have three teams been given that high a percentage to make the playoff just three weeks into the season.
Oklahoma’s chances of making the playoff this season were in the mid-single digits when the first Playoff Predictor of the 2022 season was issued, but the Sooners got a sizeable bump after beating up on Nebraska on the road last weekend. Of the 13 teams in this week’s Playoff Predictor rankings with at least a two percent probability of making the 2022 playoff, the Sooners are now up to No. 7 — behind USC but ahead of Texas — given an 18 percent chance of being one of the four teams to make the CFP this season.
The ESPN analytics group has also projected out win percentages of all of the remaining games on the Oklahoma football schedule this season. As of this week, that percentage is higher than 64 percent in every remaining game except the Red River Showdown with the Texas Longhorns. The ESPN computers give the Sooners only a 47-percent chance of beating the Longhorns in their annual rivalry game in the Cotton Bowl on Oct. 8.
As in past seasons, the only way a Big 12 team can earn a berth in the College Football Playoff is to win the conference championship, and even then it isn’t guaranteed.
As the Sooners have shown in the past, a team can still win the conference championship with a loss in the regular season if given a chance to avenge that loss to that same team in the Big 12 Championship. That is exactly what elevated OU into a playoff spot in 2018.
Let’s say the Sooners, in fact, loss to Texas in the regular season contest this year, but that is their only loss. With just one conference loss, Oklahoma earns a spot in the conference championship game and wins a 15th Big 12 championship. Given that scenario, the ESPN computer gives the Sooners an 80 percent chance of making the playoff and a 9 percent probability of winning a national title.
Looking at another scenario, what if OU losses one game to Texas or some other Big 12 team, makes it to the Big 12 Championship but losses that game. In that case, Oklahoma would have just a nine percent chance of finding a way into the 2022 playoff and just a one percent of winning it all, according to the Playoff Predictor.
The one thing we do know with 100 percent certainty is that a lot can happen to chance all of this over the next two months. Win all your games, and the calculation becomes a lot more predictable.