ESPN's Power Index gives Sooners 37 percent chance of making 2024 College Football Playoff
By Chip Rouse
The preseason evaluations, based solely on the human eye test and recent performance and, of course, gut feel, have not been particularly kind to the 2024 edition of Oklahoma football.
For a team that has averaged 10 or more wins for the vast majority of the 75 seasons, Oklahoma's first season in the almighty SEC poses a culture shock for a school that has won more conference titles (50) than any other major college program.
According to the Las Vegas handicappers, the Sooners' over/under win total is projected a 7.5 for the coming season. OU has won fewer than eight football games just twice since 1999. Unfortunately, one of those two times was just two years ago in Brent Venables first season as head coach.
It's undeniable that the Sooners will face much stronger competition in the SEC than was ever true in the Big 12. Just how well they will do navigating through a 2024 schedule that 247Sports cites as the second most difficult in the country, is yet to be determined. Interestingly, 247Sports has eight SEC teams and six Big Ten teams listed in the top-15 most difficult schedules in the coming season.
Paul Finebaum, who may be the country's biggest cheerleader about everything SEC, believes the Sooners are underrated and overlooked heading into their inaugural season of SEC football. He believes Oklahoma is capable of a nine-win season, which would mean the Crimson and Cream would finish the season with a 9-3 record and win five of its eight conference games. Six of the Sooners' eight league opponents this season (Alabama, LSU, Missouri, Ole Miss, Tennessee and Texas) are expected to be ranked in the top 25 to start the season.
While Finebaum was suggesting a 9-3 season for Oklahoma in 2024, another college football analyst, JD PicKell of On3, was bold enough to project .500 (6-6) as the best the Sooners will do this season.
This just goes to show the range of possibility for Brent Venables and the new kids on the block in the SEC this season.
The ESPN College Football Power Index, which bills itself as "a measure of a team's strength going forward for the remainder of the season," has Oklahoma as the eighth best team in the country with an FPI rating of 17.1 to begin the 2024 season. This is in contrast to most other preseason polls and previews that have the Sooners six or seven spots lower in the top-25 rankings.
The FPI gives Oklahoma a 5.1 percent chance of winning the SEC this season -- sixth best among SEC teams -- but a 37 percent chance (10th best among all FBS teams) of making the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff. If that is going to happen, as the ESPN computer suggests, OU probably needs to get those nine wins that Finebaum says the Sooners are capable of. It should also be pointed out that five other SEC teams are given higher chances of making the playoff than the Sooners, according to ESPN analytics.
As ESPN college football expert and senior writer Heather Dinch astutely notes, however, in an article on 30 teams that can reach the College Football Playoff this season, the CFP selection committee comprises 13 humans who don't always agree with the computers.