Oklahoma football schedule includes 5 of Big 12’s top 25 games in 2023
By Chip Rouse
It’s getting closer Sooner fans…47 days to go before the kickoff of the 2023 Oklahoma football season.
The 2023 Oklahoma schedule is a unique one in a number of ways. It has also been maligned by multiple college football experts as being incredibly soft.
To begin with, this will be Oklahoma’s final season as a member of the Big 12. The Sooners have been a member of the Big 12 and all of its previous iterations since 1919. Oklahoma joins the SEC beginning in the 2024 season.
Three of the Sooners’ nine conference games are against three of the four new members of the conference — @ Cincinnati, home vs. UCF and @ BYU — and for the first time in over a decade, OU will not play Kansas State, Baylor or Texas Tech in 2023. Oklahoma lost to all three teams last season and is a combined 24-12 against them since 2011, when the Big 12 discontinued a divisional structure and went to a balanced schedule.
Phil Steele’s 2023 College Football Preview ranks the Sooners’ schedule this season as the 49th most difficult. To put that in context, it means that 37 percent of the teams at the FBS level have a more difficult schedule that Oklahoma. But here’s the rub, the 48 teams ranked ahead of OU, including 10 Big 12 teams, are all Power 5 teams and represent 70 percent of all teams who compete in Power 5 conferences.
Berry Tramel, sports columnist for The Oklahoman, recently published his annual ranking of the best Big 12 games in order of importance. This season with the expanded conference structure, Trammel increased his ranking to the top 105 games (with 14 teams and a 12-game schedule for each team, there are 168 total games in the Big 12 regular season).
Three of the top-10 Big 12 games this season in Tramel’s ranking involve the Oklahoma Sooners and five of the top 25. None of OU’s three nonconference games are included among the 105 games listed in the ranking, which means five of the Sooners nine conference games are considered must-see games or among the 25 best Big 12 games, at least in the opinion of one Oklahoma sportswriter.
The 2023 OU games and where they fall in Berry Tramel’s Big 12 ranking
3. Oklahoma at Oklahoma State, November 4, in what could be the final Bedlam game.
5. Oklahoma vs. Texas, October 7 — the final time these teams play as part of Big 12.
10. TCU at Oklahoma, November 24 — a Thanksgiving Friday offering.
16. OU at Cincinnati, September 23 — OU may be the biggest-named team ever to play there.
23. Central Florida at Oklahoma, October 21 — These two teams have never played each other.
Tramel’s top two games in the Big 12 this season
1. Kansas State at Texas, November 4 — Nos. 2 and 1 in Big 12 Preseason Poll.
2. Texas at Alabama, September 9 — No explanation needed.