Oklahoma football: Sooners have resume good enough for New Year’s Six bowl

Quite a few Oklahoma football fans are upset about missing out on a New Year’s Six bowl assignment.

But the reality is, the Sooners did it to themselves by losing a couple of games they could and probably should have won.

The goal every season is the play for and win the national championship. Short of that, a conference championship is the next best measure of a successful season.

For the sake of argument, let’s hypothetically say that Oklahoma goes undefeated, or better yet finishes with one loss and prevails over Texas in a rematch in the Big 12 Championship. Would Oklahoma be considered a better team than Alabama or 13-0 and ACC champion Florida State for one of the two remaining spots in the College Football Playoff? Both my gut and my head say no.

Given that hypothetical test case, OU clearly would have been ranked higher at the end of the regular season, which presumably would have earned them a New Year’s Six bowl with little question.

The issue in real time is that the two teams ranked immediately ahead of the Sooners, Penn State and Ole Miss, are going to NY6 bowls this season and Oklahoma is not. Without a head-to-head comparison, it is problematic to say which two of those three teams are more deserving.

Had the selection decision been based solely on the final College Football Playoff rankings, OU would have been in. But NCAA rules require that the highest-ranked Group of Five team will play in one of the New Year’s Six bowl games.

Liberty, the Conference USA champion and a perfect 13-0, is the highest-ranked Group of Five team at No. 23 in the final CFP rankings. The Flames barely edged out No. 24 SMU, which Oklahoma beat this season. As a result, Liberty is going to the Fiesta Bowl and will play No. 8 Oregon.

Penn State (10-2) and Ole Miss (10-2) will face off in the Peach Bowl. Georgia and Florida in the Orange Bowl and Ohio State (11-1) and Missouri (10-2) complete the NY6 bowl lineup with a date in the Cotton Bowl.

That left the Sooners with the second-best bowl assignment in the Big 12’s selection process, the Alamo Bowl. Trust me, Oklahoma better quickly get over whatever ill feelings it is harboring. The Sooners’ opponent in the Alamo Bowl is No. 14 Arizona. The Wildcats (9-3) won their final six games after starting 3-3 and were playing about as well as any team in the country at the end of the regular season. The Sooners are going to have their hands full in San Antonio.

For the sake of furthering an otherwise mute argument, here are some statistical comparisons between Oklahoma, Penn State and Ole Miss (with national rankings in parentheses). You can be the judge of the two teams you believe are the two best teams of the three.

                                                              Oklahoma              Penn State              Ole Miss 

CFP ranking                                          12                             10                             11

Scoring offense                                   43.2 (3)                    37.2 9 (12)             34.8 (19)

Scoring defense                                  22.3 (41)                 11.4 (3)                    21.8 (34)

Total offense                                     402.4 (5)                 391.0 (59T)            455.4 (15)

Total defense                                    389.9 (79)              371.9 (57)                223.2 (1)

3rd-down offense                             49.4% (9)                40.8% (58)                36.9% (83)

3rd-down defense                            30.4% (14)             29.2% (10)                 39.0% (63)

Turnover margin                              +11 (6)                   +18 (1)                         +9 (12T)

Top-25 wins                                     Texas                      Iowa                             LSU

SMU