See where SEC Network's Roman Harper has Sooners this week in his power rankings

Oklahoma football Team 130 is among the country's top 25 teams through five weeks of the 2024 season. That's not all that surprising, given the Sooners' decorated history.

The problem is, the Sooners are now members of the power-laden SEC. Although Oklahoma ranks 19th in the most recent Associated Press Top 25 and 17th in the ESPN Football Power Index, seven teams out of the SEC are ranked ahead of the Sooners in both polls, and OU will play six of them before the season is over.

Unfortunately for Oklahoma and any other team that has the top SEC teams on this year's schedule, four of the top-five teams in the AP poll and five of the top six in the FPI are out of the SEC.

That's what you sign up for, I suppose, when you elect to play football in the lion's den, as one sportswriter called it, known as the SEC.

And the number of ranked SEC teams ahead of the Sooners could increase by one more following Texas A&M's walloping of No. 9 Missouri on Saturday.

The SEC Network's "Read & React" program, featuring co-hosts Cole Cubelic and Roman Harper and part of ESPN programming, count down the top-five teams every week in the show's "SEC Power Rankings" segment. Both Cubelic and Harper are former SEC players (Cubelic an offensive lineman at Auburn and Harper a defensive back at Alabama).

Every week, Cubelic and Harper list their top five SEC teams, and for Week 6, Cubelic's top five was more of a conventional list given the national rankings, but Harper threw a twist into the proceedings.

At No. 5 this past week, Harper surprised a number of viewers by citing the Oklahoma Sooners. "Defense travels," Harper said in posting the Sooners at No. 5. "I can't wait to see them continue to get better," he said, referring to OU's stellar defensive play and the spark the offense has gotten behind new starting quarterback Michael Hawkins Jr.

For the record, Cubelic's top five this past week consisted of No. 1 Alabama followed in order by Texas, Tennessee, Georgia and Missouri. Harper's top five were Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and Alabama.

Both lists are sure to change this week after the upsets that befell several of these teams over the weekend.