Oklahoma football: Where did OU’s Cheez-It Bowl game rank against 40 other 2022 bowls?
By Chip Rouse
The Oklahoma football season ended a little over a week ago, and on Monday, the final game of the 2022 college football season will be contested and decide the national championship.
The showdown between TCU out of the Big 12 and reigning national champion Georgia will be the 42nd and final bowl game of the season, and the winner will be crowned national champion.
As you would imagine, some of this season’s bowl games were must-see television and were exciting to the very end — including last weekend’s College Football Playoff national semifinal games — while some were hardly worth the effort.
It got us wondering where Oklahoma’s Cheez-It Bowl game against 13th-ranked Florida State might fall in a ranking of all the bowl games played this season.
We didn’t have to ponder this too long because the college football crew at CBS Sports did the analysis for us.
Discounting the national championship game to be decided Monday night, which typically would be one of if not the top game of the bowl season, the Georgia-Ohio State Peach Bowl, one of the two national semifinal games, was No. 1. Surprisingly, though, based on the opinion of CBS Sports, the other national semifinal between TCU and Michigan came in No. 5.
Ranked No. 2 was the Cotton Bowl between USC and Tulane, won by Tulane with a furious late fourth-quarter comeback. No. 3 featured another remarkable come-from-behind rally by Kansas that fell just short in an Arkansas win in overtime in the Liberty Bowl. This was one of just two overtime games in the 41 bowl contests completed thus far.
The fourth best bowl game of the 2022 postseason, according to CBS Sports, may surprise you. It was the Cheez-It Bowl between Oklahoma and Florida State. Here is an excerpt from the CBSSports.com article about that game:
"“Rematch of the 2001 BCS Championship game for which we waited 20 years. This is the kind of bowl game you love in that it gave both teams reason to feel good about themselves heading into next season.“Offseason narratives aside, the game itself was just a lot of fun. It was high-scoring with a lot of exciting plays, and the fourth quarter was nonstop drama.”"
Prior to the 2022-23 bowl season, the OU-Florida State matchup in the Cheez-It Bowl was ranked as the 11th best game to watch.
Although the Sooners lost 35-32, suffering their fourth three-point defeat of the season, we heartily agree with the CBS Sports assessment of the quality of the viewing experience.