What a difference a year makes in terms of how college football experts view the way-too-early outlook for Oklahoma football for next season.
The 2025 college football season officially came to an end on Monday night with the crowning of the Indiana Hoosiers as national champions after a Cinderella-like season. Now, full attention has turned to next season, exemplified by the annual top-of-the-year avalanche of projected top-25 teams to start the 2026 season.
Sooners receiving early top-10 love in 2026 way-too-early rankings
A year ago at this time, most media organizations who regularly participate in the early ranking of the best teams for the coming season overlooked Oklahoma as a top-25 team. That number had improved by the time the updated post-spring projections were issued and more news had come out about how head coach Brent Venables and Co. were going about turning around a disappointing 6-7 2024 season.
One outlet that did have faith early on in 2025 in Oklahoma's improvement chances was On3, which had the Sooners at No. 18 this time last year. That same outlet projected the 2026 Sooners at No. 10 in its release of its way-too-early top 25 on Monday.
The floodgate has opened, and a number of way-too-early top-25 projections have come out in the last 24 hours, all including Oklahoma ranked somewhere in the 6-14 range. USA Today ranked the Sooners as high as No. 6, while FanSided had the next highest faith in Oklahoma for the coming season, ranking the Sooners inside the top 10 at No. 8. Sporting News wasn't far behind, either, with OU at No. 9.
FOX Sports had OU beginning the 2026 season at No. 14, the lowest top-25 ranking so far for the Sooners, stating that the Sooners "will be poised to contend for the SEC title." The problem is, FOX has seven other SEC teams ranked ahead of OU.
Saturday Blitz also had the Sooners just outside of the top 10 at No. 11.
CBS Sports and Athlon Sports agree with On3's No. 10 ranking for Oklahoma. Meanwhile, ESPN's Mark Schlabach placed OU No. 12 in that outlet's way-too-early top-25 rankings,
and Yahoo Sports has the Sooners at No. 13.
The good news in contrast to last year at this time: Every sports media outlet that has released a way-too-early top-25 ranking for 2026 has Oklahoma included. And even better, the majority have the Sooners inside the top 10, which represents a major improvement over the too-early forecasts of a year ago.