Based on all of the major preseason top-25 polls for the 2024 college football season, Oklahoma checks in around 14 through 16, yet in most every one of those preseason rankings, the Sooners are projected no better than the seventh or eighth-best team in the SEC for the coming season.
That is a position totally uncharacteristic of and unfamiliar to Oklahoma football, considered one of the college football blue bloods and the sixth winningest program historically.
There is no denying that some of the best teams in the country currently take up residence in the SEC, but when you take into account the all-time body of work, three SEC teams stand out from all the rest, and two of them -- Oklahoma and Texas -- are new to the conference this season.
Staff writer Joe Mussato, who covers the Sooners for The Oklahoman, recently did an analysis comparing how the current 16 teams in the SEC stack up in an all-time conference football hierarchy. He used six measurement factors in his retrospective analysis: all-time winning percentage, bowl game appearances, consensus All-Americans, NFL Draft picks, weeks in the Associated Press Top 25 and weeks ranked in the College Football Playoff standings.
Each SEC team was assigned a numerical value (1 through 16) on how it ranked within the conference in each of the measurement categories. The sum values determined the overall ranking for each team, which were ten subdivided into five separate tiers.
The top tier consisted of two teams with Alabama ranked No. 1as the best team all-time in the SEC. The Oklahoma Sooners were right behind at No. 2 with an average ranking of 2.0 in the six categories. Alabama's average ranking was 1.3.
Three more teams are listed in Tier 2. That's where we find Georgia (3.0), and LSU and Texas (4.5) tied for fourth. Here's how the rest of the SEC stacked up on an all-time basis:
Tier 3
T6. Florida Gators, Tennessee Volunteers (both with average ranking of 6.3)
8. Auburn Tigers (7.8)
Tier 4
9. Texas A&M Aggies (8.8)
10. Arkansas Razorbacks (9.0)
11. Ole Miss Rebels (10.5)
12. Missouri Tigers (11.8)
Tier 5
13. Mississippi State (13.5)
14. Kentucky Wildcats (13.7)
15. South Carolina Gamecocks (14.0)
16. Vanderbilt Commodores (15.7)
Oklahoma's seven national championships in football, seven Heisman Trophy winners and a .725 all-time winning percentage separated the Sooners from every SEC team but Alabama. Only Alabama and Notre Dame have more national championships in the AP era than OU, and only Ohio State, Michigan, Alabama and Notre Dame have a better all-time winning percentage.
For the record, the Sooners placed second to Alabama in The Oklahoman's SEC ranking in all-time winning percentage, No. 4 in the number of bowl games, No. 2 to Alabama in consensus All-Americans, No. 1 in the number of NFL Draft picks, No. 1 in number of weeks ranked in the AP poll and No. 2 in weeks ranked in the College Football Playoff standings.