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Oklahoma football: ESPN’s post-spring college football top 25 ignores Sooners

By Chip Rouse

Jan. 4, 2011; New Orleans, LA, USA; ESPN logo prior to the 2011 Sugar Bowl between the Arkansas Razorbacks and the Ohio State Buckeyes at the Louisiana Superdome. Mandatory Credit: Andrew Weber-USA TODAY Sports
Jan. 4, 2011; New Orleans, LA, USA; ESPN logo prior to the 2011 Sugar Bowl between the Arkansas Razorbacks and the Ohio State Buckeyes at the Louisiana Superdome. Mandatory Credit: Andrew Weber-USA TODAY Sports /
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ESPN ostensibly has taken the under on all the positive expectations about Oklahoma football getting its act together in its second season under head coach Brent Venables.

Perhaps the popular cable sports and entertainment network will feel differently about the Sooners when they become part of the all-powerful SEC beginning in the 2024 college football season. But until then, the staff at ESPN is convinced that OU football is what it’s disappointing 2022 record says it is.

That is, a team that is having to learn all over again how to win and what success on the gridiron is all about

Earlier this week, USA Today and 247Sports came out with their post-spring college football top 25 projections for the 2023 season. Both outlets, along with quite a few others, including ESPN, had issued way-too-early top-25 projections back in January immediately following the end of the 2022 season.

Related Story. Sooners on upward swing in post-spring top-25 polls for 2023. light

Now, with spring practice sessions and annual intrasquad games completed and 2023 recruiting classes and transfers largely in place, it seems prudent to take a revised look at those earlier top-25 projections. And that’s what has begun to happen this week. Seemingly not wanting to be left out of the secondary wave of revised forecasts, ESPN issued its new version, and Oklahoma is nowhere to be found. Four Big 12 schools remain in the ESPN post-spring top 25, but the Sooners are conspicuously absent — at least if you are an OU fan.

As a matter of record, Oklahoma was not ranked in the earlier ESPN top 25 either.

What spurs the controversy over this omission — or was it an act of commission? — is the fact that Oklahoma was ranked in the top 25, although at the back end, in the way-too-early projections by both USA Today and 247Sports. And when the revised versions came out earlier this week from both outlets, the Sooners’ position was improved by three spots in both. USA Today actually has Oklahoma at No. 18 and the second highest-ranked Big 12 team behind Texas.

I’m not exactly sure why the Sooners aren’t projected as a top-25 team by the crew at ESPN other than the supposition that ESPN is not willing to take the same leap of faith that the college football staffs at the other two media outlets are toward Oklahoma football in the coming season.

Interestingly, though, in the ESPN 2023 College Football Power Index, Oklahoma is ranked 11 with a projected win total of 9.7 and a 24.5-percent chance of winning the Big 12 championship.

That doesn’t sound to me like a team that should be excluded from a top-25 projection for the coming  season regardless of what time of year it is.

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