As a member of the Big 12, Oklahoma, along with chief rival Texas, regularly possessed the most talented rosters in that league year in and year out. All but three times since 2000, a top-25 recruiting class by the Sooners translated into a top-25 national ranking at the end of the season.
You're only as good as the talent you are able to bring to the roster and your ability to develop and grow that talent -- and, of course, retain that talent. Feeding the pipeline, whether it be through high school recruiting or, these days, the Transfer Portal, is the lifeblood of every college football program.
There's also a discernable difference in that regard between talent levels in the Big 12 and SEC, as the competition for the available talent. The SEC footprint in the southeast part of the country is a rich breeding ground for college football talent, but that also makes the competition for that talent fiercer among the SEC teams located in that area.
Steven Lassan of Athlon Sports recently published an article ranking the roster talent of the 16 SEC teams for the 2026 season. To come up with this ranking, he averaged the recruiting class rankings of each SEC program over the past five seasons in 2022-26 based on the 247Sports Composite Team Rankings.
OU's 2026 roster rates as 5th-most talented in SEC
Oklahoma's five-year average recruiting class ranking was 10.8, which placed the Sooners in a fifth-place tie with Texas A&M. It's probably not that surprising that the SEC's traditional football powerhouse programs Alabama, Georgia, LSU and now Texas ranked ahead of Oklahoma in this talent analysis.
Alabama ranked No. 1 in the five-year assessment of national recruiting class rankings by SEC teams with an average ranking of 2.0. The Crimson Tide were followed by Georgia (2.8), Texas (4.4), LSU (9.0) and then Oklahoma and Texas A&M (10.8). Six other SEC schools had an average recruiting class ranking that placed them in the top 25 of all FBS teams.
In the case of both Oklahoma and Texas, while both are recent newcomers to the SEC, three years of this measurement cycle included recruiting classes that were free of the schools' affiliation with the Big 12. Just one more indication that the Sooners and Longhorns were an excellent fit for the SEC and ready for the heightened competitive level of that conference.
In their two seasons as members of the SEC, Oklahoma (2025) and Texas (2024) have both already made it to the College Football Playoff.
Lassan was quick to acknowledge in this talent analysis that transfers and departures are not accounted for and obviously also play an increasing part in talent accumulation, as well as retention in this new age of college athletics and roster management.
There's another intriguing correlation that can be made between recruiting class rankings and the final AP national rankings that same year. Ten times since 2000, when Oklahoma has landed a top-10 recruiting class, the team also finished in the top 10 in the final national rankings.