They predict the Oklahoma Sooners to finish the 2026 college football season playing where?
ESPN's Kyle Bonagura and Mark Schlabach over the weekend released some preseason bowl projections before things officially kick off with Week 0 action on Saturday. As most experts expect an improved OU squad to return to the College Football Playoff or at least be in the conversation, this ESPN duo instead has unthinkably low expectations for the Sooners, ending up in the ReliaQuest Bowl against Michigan or the Las Vegas Bowl against Nebraska.
If that's how 2026 ends, Brent Venables' new contract extension would look like a catastrophic mistake and, even when healthy, quarterback John Mateer wasn't any better, if not worse. But it's hard to imagine that much going wrong for the Sooners, no matter how daunting that schedule looks here in August.
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— John Higgins (@JohnHiggins55) August 22, 2026
Sooners' possible matchups seem fun, but College Football Playoff is the only goal
That ReliaQuest Bowl in Tampa, Florida, is the better option of the two predictions. Iowa beat Vanderbilt in last year's matchup, so that shows it's at least a respectable pairing between two top-25 teams from the SEC and Big Ten.
It's the most head-scratching matchup, though. The Sooners already play Michigan during the season Week 2 in Ann Arbor and also hosted the Wolverines last year in Norman. Bowl games are already nearly unwatchable, so those making decisions should avoid an even worse rematch of a game we already saw. That Week 2 contest actually matters, but by the postseason after what would be disappointing regular seasons, those rosters would be a shell of what they were Week 2.
As for the Las Vegas Bowl, it paired together Nebraska and Utah last year. The Cornhuskers ended up in Vegas after going 7-5 and finishing 10th in the Big Ten in 2025. You know things went bad when the Sooners end up in the same bowl as the Cornhuskers. That's definitely a fun matchup, but not the way we want the OU-Nebraska rivalry renewed.
OU-Nebraska is famous for "The Game of the Century" and top-5 matchups with national-title implications. After not meeting for four years, it would be disrespectful to the historic rivalry for these programs to meet in the Las Vegas Bowl with depleted rosters. Would we watch and claim bragging rights? Absolutely, but it still wouldn't be right.
And gone are the days that Oklahoma wants to be on the same level as Nebraska.
The only reason for either expert to predict the Sooners to fall this low has to be because of the difficult schedule, which includes six teams that were ranked in the preseason AP Top 25 Poll. That includes likely three top-25 clashes within the first five games of the season between No. 16 Michigan, No. 3 Georgia and No. 5 Texas.
The Sooners, though, should again have one of the best defenses in all of college football and a much-improved offense with more talent than Mateer.
These are sorry predictions for the Sooners, but the reality is, anything short of the College Football Playoff is unacceptable for a blue blood like Oklahoma with the expectations set for 2026.
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