Phil Steele not as high on Oklahoma in 2025 preseason rankings heading into tough SEC
By Chip Rouse
Phil Steele, one in the same as the annual college football preview publication that bears his name, has written very favorably about the Oklahoma football program throughout most of the 2000s. More than once, he even went so far as to project the Sooners would win the national championship.
The Sooners did win one national title in the 2000s (in 2000), but that was not one Steele predicted ahead of time. Over the past five seasons, Steele's eponymous college football bible has ranked Oklahoma as follows in its preseason top-40 rankings:
2019 -- No. 5
2020 -- No. 4
2021 -- No. 1 (what ended up being Lincoln Riley's last season at OU)
2022 -- No. 8 (Brent Venables' first season as OU head coach)
2023 -- No. 20
It appears Steele lost faith in OU after the Sooners went 6-7 in Brent Venables' first season as head coach, knocking Oklahoma back from No. 8 in the 2022 preview magazine to No. 20 in the 2023 publication.
The 2024 edition of the Phil Steele College Football Preview magazine won't hit newsstands for several more weeks, but the publication has released its 2024 preseason top 40. Oklahoma checks in at the No. 20 spot, with no change in its preseason positioning, according to Steele, from the Sooners' preseason ranking a year ago, despite a 10-3 record and a four-game improvement over 2022.
It's probably not so much a reflection of the fact that Oklahoma is moving to a conference where some of the very best teams in the land reside, but very much an indication that the Sooners' 2024 schedule includes six of the seven best teams in the SEC, all of whom are ranked ahead of OU in Steele's preseason top 40. I suppose Sooner fans should be relieved that top-ranked Georgia is not one of the six teams.
As Bob Stoops liked to say, "You have to play the best to be the best." Oklahoma has that covered in the extreme this coming season. A win or two...or three...in that run could change everything.