Most college football fans would agree that the only postseason contests that really matter are the 11 games and 12 teams that make up the College Football Playoff on the now month-long road that eventually ends up crowning the national champion.
This year, Oklahoma made its fifth appearance in the 12-year history of the College Football Playoff and also its earliest ever on the postseason calendar. With the exception of the past two seasons, the CFP kicked off no earlier than New Year's Eve and after most of the other less-meaningful bowl games had been played.
CFP first-round loss ends OU's season earlier than almost every other postseason bowl team
Now that the playoff field has expanded to 12 teams, the opening-round games are held much earlier in December. And that presents its own set of issues for teams, like the Sooners, who are unable to advance beyond the first round. And this will become even more problematic with the likelihood that the playoff will be expanded to 16 teams in the near future.
What began in 1998 with two teams competing in a BCS National Championship format -- as a means of eliminating the possibility of split national champions -- has since evolved into the College Football Playoff, which included four teams the first 10 seasons, then expanded to a dozen teams last year.
Because there are now 12 playoff teams instead of four -- which, of course, enables teams like 2025 Oklahoma to make the playoff -- it necessitates beginning the playoff a couple of weeks earlier than the New Year's holiday, when there were just four playoff participants.
As the No. 8 seed in this year's playoff field, the Sooners earned the final home-field spot in their first-round matchup against nine-time CFP participant Alabama. Short of a first-round victory over the Crimson Tide, which would have been OU's first playoff win, that was the good news.
The bad news was the 2025 playoff game against Alabama was played on Dec. 19, which was the earliest a bowl-bound postseason Oklahoma team's season has come to an end.
For many years, there were just four major bowl games -- Rose Bowl, Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl and Cotton Bowl - and the teams selected to play in those premier New Year's Day bowl games were comprised of the champions of the major conferences and other at-large teams ranked among the nation's top 10. The national champion was determined by the team ranked No. 1 in the final Associated Press or United Press International (now the Coaches Poll) poll after those four bowl games were completed.
Gradually over the past 75 seasons, the number of postseason bowl games has grown to 41, which involves almost two-thirds of all Football Bowl Subdivision teams. Many believe that is far too many and dilutes the value and meaning of getting to play a postseason game against a quality opponent.
The Sooners have 58 bowl appearances, fourth-most all-time, and their 31 bowl victories are tied for the sixth-most of all FBS teams. Before this season, however, the earliest postseason game by an Oklahoma team was Dec. 24, 1993, in the John Hancock Bowl, a 41-10 win over Texas Tech.
Nine non-playoff bowl games preceded the Dec. 19 game between OU and Alabama, and 16 more were played this past weekend, with seven additional bowl games to be played before the end of the year. And there are four non-playoff bowl games scheduled after the first of the year.
That's more than half of the postseason bowl schedule, or 27 games, that will have been played after the mid-December Oklahoma-Alabama playoff game. It's almost as if the Sooners had not made the postseason, or at least not a meaningful postseason game, despite their 10-2 regular-season record.
Of course, all Oklahoma had to do to avoid all of this was win its opening-round playoff game with Alabama. Maybe next year.