Oklahoma football: Guess who Sooners won’t have to play in 2023 season?
By Chip Rouse
The Big 12 has released its 2023 football schedule and it features several surprising changes from what Oklahoma football and the other conference teams have been accustomed to in the 27-year history of the Big 12.
The round-robin schedule that has made the Big 12 unique from the other Power Five conferences nearly the past dozen years is out the window. With four new teams joining the conference this summer, it is no longer possible to have a nine-game conference schedule in which every team plays each other.
Cincinnati, Houston and UCF (Central Florida), all current members of the American Athletic Conference, and BYU become part of the Big 12 next football season. There addition plus Oklahoma and Texas, who will remain in the conference for at least one more season before moving to the Big 12, expands the Big 12 membership to 14 schools.
Oklahoma’s 2023 schedule, per the Big 12 announcement on Tuesday, is probably a noteworthy for who the Sooners will not be playing next season as the nine teams who make up OU’s 2023 conference slate.
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Texas, of course remains on the schedule. The annual Red River Showdown is set for Oct. 7 in the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. The Bedlam series with Oklahoma State will continue for at least one more year. The Sooners and Oklahoma State will play each other the first weekend in November in Stillwater.
Not on the Oklahoma 2023 schedule are Kansas State, Baylor and Texas Tech. Three of the Sooners’ six losses last season were to those three teams. OU will play three of the four new conference teams. The Sooners will open the Big 12 season on Sept. 23 at Cincinnati. They will host UCF (Dillon Gabriel’s former team) on Oct. 21 and travel to Provo, Utah, to play BYU on Nov. 18.
Oklahoma opens the 2023 season at home against Arkansas State on Sept. 2 and will host SMU the second weekend of the season. OU’s final nonconference opponent is Tulsa. That will be the Sooners first road game of the season on Sept. 16.
The Sooners will have just three Big 12 home games (Iowa State, Central Florida and West Virginia) and five road games against conference opponents (at Cincinnati, at Kansas, at Oklahoma State, at BYU and at TCU to end the regular season. The road contest at TCU will be the second straight year the Sooners will face the Horned Frogs on the road.
If you’re a Sooner fan you have to question whether the unbalance between home and road games as part of the Big 12 schedule is because of OU’s lame duck status as a member of the Big 12. Additionally, four of the Sooners final five games are on the road: back-to-back away games at Kansas and Oklahoma State, followed by a home game with West Virginia, followed by back-to-back road games at BYU and TCU to end the regular season.
Aside from the atypical number of road games, this is a schedule that on paper at least appears to be favorable for an Oklahoma turnaround from its sub-.500 2022 season, the first losing season by a Sooner team since 1998.
Not having to play Kansas State and Baylor, both of which have given OU lots of trouble in recent years actually could be beneficial to the Sooners. And when you consider that the annual schedule rotation normally would have called for those two games to be played on the road this season, the concession is even greater.
Here is the complete OU football schedule for 2023:
Sept. 2 — Arkansas State
Sept. 9 — SMU
Sept. 16 — at Tulsa
Sept. 23 — at Cincinnati
Sept. 30 — Iowa State
Oct. 7 — Texas in Dallas
Oct. 14 — Bye
Oct. 21 — Central Florida
Oct. 28 — at Kansas
Nov. 4 — at Oklahoma State
Nov. 11 — West Virginia
Nov. 18 — at BYU
Nov. 24 — at TCU