The Oklahoma Sooners have been on life support for weeks now, but they've proven time and time again that they're hard to kill, so a College Football Playoff game in primetime shouldn't be the death of them or even have them scared for their lives.
The No. 8 Sooners will host No. 9 Alabama at 7 p.m. CT Friday at Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium in the first round of the CFP. It's a rematch where the season and hopes of a national title ends for the loser, but that's really no different from the first time the Sooners played Bama over a month ago in Tuscaloosa.
Taylor Wein explains why rematch with Alabama feels like just another game
After suffering their second loss of the season to Ole Miss on Oct. 25, the Sooners' chances of making the playoff, according to ESPN's Football Power Index, was at 19.6% with four games left on the schedule. A third loss during the final month of the season would essentially put those chances at zero. So OU players and coaches donned black "Hard To Kill" shirts and have been just that.
A week after losing to Ole Miss at home, the Sooners' trip to Tennessee was advertised on ESPN as an elimination game for the playoff. OU prevailed 33-27 and rocketed its playoff chances to 51% as the Volunteers' plummeted to 3%. However, even with newly inflated chances, a loss would still likely erase any playoff chances for the Sooners.
After a bye week, the Sooners went into Bryant-Denny Stadium to play then-No. 4 Alabama, which had the longest active home winning streak in the country, for what was deemed another do-or-die game for OU. The Sooners killed the Crimson Tide's wining streak with a 23-21 victory while keeping their playoff hopes more alive than ever.
Even with the toughest part of their schedule over, the Sooners still had to avoid home upsets to Missouri and LSU to officially punch their ticket to the playoff. And just like the two games before, OU survived and advanced to clinch a home playoff game in Norman and ultimately set up a rematch with Bama that has everything on the line.
But on Friday night, other than a CFP logo on Owen Field and the same patch on their crimson jerseys, nothing really changes for the Sooners.
"For me, the first round of the playoffs was four weeks ago," OU defensive end Taylor Wein said. "This is just another game. We knew that if we lost, that was gonna ruin a lot of our goals. Our mentality is we're not gonna lose. We're gonna figure out a way to win. We need to play our best ball, and when we do, we play at a really high level and it's really hard to beat us.
"So for us, yeah, it's just another game. We gotta go 1-0, and it's no different than it was against those last three or four games. Same mentality."