Oklahoma football: ESPN projection still has Sooners playing in late December
By Chip Rouse
In the past three weeks, the Oklahoma football program has gone from a potential College Football Playoff contender to now being concerned about getting enough wins to play in the postseason at all.
After starting 3-0 and outscoring its three opening opponents 127 to 30, the Sooners have dropped three straight games, all to Big 12 opponents, by the combined score of 138 to 51. Only one of those losses was even close. An Oklahoma team has not lost three consecutive regular season game since the 1998 season.
To say the Sooners are struggling right now is a gross understatement. It’s extremely rare to see a team go from being ranked in the top-10 nationally to wondering if it is even going to finish with a winning record, all in a matter of a few weeks.
This is certainly uncharted territory for the Sooners and their fans. Of the six regular-season games OU has remaining in Brent Venables first season as the Oklahoma head coach, only one (West Virginia) has an overall losing record and three are ranked in the top-25 nationally.
The Sooners need to win at least three of their remaining games — home vs. Kansas this week, at Iowa State, home vs. Baylor, at West Virginia, home vs, Oklahoma State and at Texas Tech — to become bowl eligible. Three more wins would prevent a losing record, which hasn’t happed at Oklahoma since 1998, and make the Sooners eligible for postseason play, but it does not necessarily guarantee a postseason bowl berth.
Every week during the college football season, ESPN issues a rolling update of what the postseason bowl picture could look like and which teams might be going where and matching up with whom in the postseason, from the least significant of the bowl assignments all the way to the College Football Playoff.
It’s hard to imagine that just a few weeks ago, Mark Schlabach and Kyle Bonagura of
ESPN projected Oklahoma as one of the playoff participants. After three straight losses, the past two by blowout proportions, the Sooners’ bowl stock has dropped precipitously. Despite all of this, the two ESPN staff writers still believe OU will get things figured out and do enough in the weeks ahead to become bowl eligible.
But that possibility is hanging by a thread. As of this week, ESPN’s Bonagura projects the Sooners to play in the Lockheed Martin Armed Forces Bowl in Fort Worth. Texas on Dec. 22, facing Memphis out of the American Athletic Conference.
Schlabach has Oklahoma going to the Radiance Technolgies Independence Bowl in Shreveport, Louisiana, on Dec. 23 against Oregon State out of the Pac-12 Conference.
The last time an Oklahoma team played in a postseason bowl that far down in the pecking order was in 1999, Bob Stoops’ first season at Oklahoma. The Sooners finished 7-5 that season and, ironically, were awarded a spot in the Independence Bowl.
Since that 1999 season, Oklahoma has been to a postseason bowl in 23 consecutive seasons.
Over that time, OU has played in four BCS championship games and appeared in four College Football Playoffs. The Sooners have also played in the Sugar Bowl twice, the Cotton Bowl twice and the Rose Bowl outside of the BCS and CFP rotation.
The rest of the season now sits before Oklahoma with its 23-year bowl streak sitting in the balance.