It's probably fair to say that Oklahoma's first full year of athletic competition as a member of the Southeastern Conference was, for the most part, not something to jump up and down about.
Yes, the Sooners were SEC regular-season champions and tournament co-champions in softball, finished second in women's gymnastics (but later won the national championship) and fourth in women's basketball, but it was Oklahoma's lackluster finish in the high-revenue sports like football, men's basketball and baseball that stood out the most.
How did major Sooner sports programs measure up in first year in mighty SEC?
Oklahoma found life in the sports stronghold that is the SEC much different than what things were like all those years -- 105 of them -- in what is the Big 12 and all of its evolving iterations.
The Sooners compete in 19 of the 22 athletic programs offered in the SEC. Oklahoma's athletic programs do not include equestrian or men's and women swimming and diving, all three of which are part of the SEC athletic offering.
Similarly, the SEC does not have men's gymnastics, which is something the Sooners have excelled in for a number of years, but as members of the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation. Wrestling is another sport that Oklahoma participates in outside of the SEC. The Sooners remain as affiliate members of the Big 12 in wrestling.
Everyone knows of the SEC's supremacy, top to bottom, over every other conference in the country. Unfortunately for Oklahoma, a college football blue blood, the athletic strength of the SEC doesn't stop with football. SEC schools are among the best nationally in all of the major revenue sports and a number of the non-revenue athletic programs as well.
Oklahoma's average finish this academic year (2024-25) in the six highest-revenue sports as first-time members of the SEC was 12.6 for the men while tying for 13th in both football and basketball and 12th in baseball.
The men's results compare to an average conference finish of 2.3 in the three highest-revenue women's sports programs (4th in basketball, 1st in softball and 2nd in gymnastics). The OU women's gymnastics squad lost out to LSU in the SEC Championship, but went on to win the 2025 national championship, its seventh national title and third in the last four years.
Combined, the Oklahoma men and women averaged a finish of 7.5 in conference standings in the six major-revenue sports this past season, and looking ahead to the what the Sooners have coming back in each of these programs for 2025-26, they should be able to improve on that standing.
The average conference finish in the 19 athletic programs the Oklahoma Sooners participated in 2024-25 was 7.7. That breaks down to 9.7 for the men and 6.8 for women's sports. It's important to note, however, only women's soccer among the OU athletic programs -- with a 13th-place finish, which failed to qualify for the SEC Championship -- did not see NCAA postseason action this past year.
Oklahoma has built a strong national reputation and lengthy record of success across a wide number of its athletic programs. The Sooners have 45 NCAA national championships to their credit in six different sports and have won at least one national title in each of the last 12 years (excluding the pandemic year of 2020). How many other schools would like to make that claim?
Men's gymnastics leads all OU athletic programs with 12 national championships. Softball is next with eight, followed by football, women's gymnastics and wrestling with seven, and baseball and men's golf both with two.
They say that teams play up to the level of their competition and that a rising tide lifts all boats. So participating in arguably best athletic conference in college sports -- and without question the nation's best in the major sports programs -- should make Oklahoma's athletic programs even stronger and more competitive in the long run.
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