Oklahoma football: Sooners going bowling, but does it really matter?

Oklahoma football is heading to a postseason bowl for the 24th consecutive season.

What’s not said in that declarative sentence is this is the closest the Sooners have come to not making the postseason during that time span, which dates back to the 1999 season.

It is not determined yet which bowl Oklahoma will be headed to or whom the Sooners’ opponent will be. That won’t be announced until Dec. 4, the day after the conference championships are finalized.

What we do know for sure is that with just a 6-6 record Oklahoma will not be going to a top-tier bowl, which has been the general rule over the last 24 seasons. Since Bob Stoops became the Sooners’ head coach at the beginning of the 1999 season, OU has appeared in four national championship games during the BCS era (1998 to 2013) and made four College Football Playoff appearances.

Over that same time frame, the Sooners have appeared at least once in each of the six prime bowl sites that make up the CFP and New Year’s Six bowl rotation: Orange Bowl (5 times); Sugar, Cotton and Fiesta Bowls (3 times each; Rose Bowl (2 times), and the Peach Bowl (1 time).

That adds up to 17 appearances in one of the six major bowl assignments in the 23 seasons since 1999. Or, to look at it another way, Oklahoma has gone to what would be considered one of the lower-tier bowls just six times during that span.

There are plenty of teams around the country who would relish the opportunity to boast that they’ve been to 23 consecutive postseason bowls of any variety regardless of where it falls in the bowl pecking order.

All of this begs two obvious questions:

• Does OU really deserve to go to a bowl, even with the minimum number of wins to gain bowl eligibility, given that the Sooners’ level of play during the 2022 season was no better than .500?
• Does it really matter, given all the fan disappointment in the team’s performance and the team’s history of playing for much more at this time of the season?

Addressing the first question, some outside of the team may feel that this Sooner team is not representative of Oklahoma’s proud bowl history resume and would be better off just packing it in, regroup and get ready for next season. But the reality is, Oklahoma did what it had to to become bowl eligible and because of that the players earned the right to participate in a postseason bowl.

Regarding the notion of whether going to a bowl game really matters this year given that it isn’t a major bowl, the answer is it absolutely matters. Do you really think the OU players, who have worked really hard for the past five or six months, regardless of less than favorable results, want their season to end with the loss in the regular-season finale at Texas Tech? It’s also an opportunity for Brent Venables and his staff to keep coaching and developing them, as much for next season as in preparation to win the bowl game.

There is more to a bowl game than the actual game itself. It’s also a reward to the players for all the hard work and effort they put in during the summer, the preseason and during the actual season. It’s one of the goals that every team strives for, at a minimum every college football season.

And it goes without saying that it’s better to end the season with a win to provide momentum to build on going into offseason and the process ramps up all over again heading into the next season. Participating in a bowl game provides OU that opportunity.

So if we can all agree that Oklahoma has earned the right to play a 13th game this season and that going to a bowl has value for the players, coaches, recruits and also the fans, the next question is which bowl the Sooners will land in and whom they will play?

Several media outlets have been following this on a national basis and have issued weekly projections on who will be going where and what the matchups might be.

For example, the latest bowl projections by ESPN and CBS Sports, have the Sooners playing an opponent from the Big Ten in the Guaranteed Rate Bowl to be played at Chase Field in Phoenix on Dec. 27. ESPN has OU playing Wisconsin. CBS Sports projects Maryland as the Sooners’ opponent.

Yahoo Sports, Sporting News and Pro Football Network have a different view of where Oklahoma will be headed. All three have the Sooners playing in the AutoZone Liberty Bowl on Dec. 28 at Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium in Memphis against either Ole Miss (OU offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby’s former team) or Arkansas.

USA Today, 247Sports and Athlon Sports have Oklahoma going to the TaxAct Texas Bowl to be played at NRG Stadium in Houston on Dec. 28. Athlon Sports and 247Sports project Arkansas as OU’s opponent. USA Today has Oklahoma and Missouri as the potential matchup, which would be a battle with a former Big 12 foe.

As you can see, there are several possibilities. We’ll know for sure this Sunday. A Texas location would be more convenient for Oklahoma fans, but Memphis isn’t that far away, either. We do know that Sooner fans travel well, and the Oklahoma football brand is generally a big draw for any college bowl site