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Oklahoma football: College Football News has early prediction for Sooners’ 2023 season

By Chip Rouse

Oklahoma coach Brent Venables runs onto the field before a college football game between the University of Oklahoma Sooners (OU) and the UTEP Miners at Gaylord Family - Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman, Okla., Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022. Oklahoma won 45-13.Ou Vs Utep
Oklahoma coach Brent Venables runs onto the field before a college football game between the University of Oklahoma Sooners (OU) and the UTEP Miners at Gaylord Family - Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in Norman, Okla., Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022. Oklahoma won 45-13.Ou Vs Utep /
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We are at the point in the calendar and in the college and Oklahoma football offseason when media story angles and sportsbooks begin projecting win totals and championship chances to supplement the way-too-early top-25 projections.

The Sooners, preparing for their second season under head coach Brent Venables, are not just hoping but planning to show marked improvement over their disappointing 6-7 season of last season.

Looking back over a long history of championship success on the gridiron, the Sooners have rarely been down long after suffering a down season. In fact, in 128 years of varsity football, Oklahoma has experienced just 13 seasons when it lost more games than it won.

According to a consensus ranking by 247Sports of the numerous way-too-early top-25 projections for the next college football season, Oklahoma is projected at No. 24 to begin the 2023 season. Although far below the top-10 preseason ranking the Sooners have grown accustomed to since the Bob Stoops era began at OU, it represents progress from what was the worst Oklahoma football season in nearly a quarter of a century as well as historical respect for the Sooner football brand.

College Football News has taken its preview of the 2023 season a step further — and we can expect other outlets to follow with similar win total and conference-ranking projections — by predicting the outcome every Big 12 game this coming season, including the 12 games on the Oklahoma 2023 schedule. The CFN editors prefaced the game-by-game breakdown with the caveat that this was just the spring version and that the preview would be revisited and potentially altered at the end of the summer.

You can read the full results of the spring version of the 2023 Big 12 breakdown for yourself, but suffice to say that Oklahoma is projected as one of the Big 12 contenders in its final season before shifting allegiance to the SEC. In fact, without giving away too much, if what CFN is predicting ultimately comes to pass this season, the rest of the Big 12 won’t be throwing any going away parties for the Sooners or the Texas Longhorns.

One factor that should help OU’s rebound in 2023 is a much easier schedule than in recent seasons. To begin with, the Sooners do not play a Power Five opponent in their three nonconference games to start the season. Kansas State, Texas Tech and Baylor are also absent from OU’s schedule because of the unbalanced nature of this season’s schedule with four new teams (BYU, Cincinnati, UCF and Houston) joining the conference. Houston is the only one of the new teams not on Oklahoma’s 2023 schedule, and two of those three games are on the road.

CFN has the Sooners losing three games in 2023 to go with nine wins. I believe OU is capable of winning as many as 10 or 11 games this season. Check out what CFN has to say on the subject and judge for yourself.

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