The 2024 college football season is underway. Week Zero served up an appetizer platter on Saturday before Week 1 has wall-to-wall football from Thursday to Monday on Labor Day weekend.
With less than a week before the Oklahoma Sooners begin their season, the anticipation is palpable for the first season in the [autotag]SEC[/autotag]. Third-year head coach [autotag]Brent Venables[/autotag] thinks he has OU ready to excel on defense, and he hopes the offense can show out as well.
Nationally, the Sooners were ranked No. 16 by both the US LBM Coaches Poll and the Associated Press to begin the season. That number should rise with No. 10 Florida State‘s upset loss against Georgia Tech to open up the college football season. OU was picked to finish eighth in the SEC media poll.
ESPN took on the challenge of ranking all 134 FBS teams into 24 different tiers (ESPN+) before most schools kick off the year.
Oklahoma landed in Tier 4, with ESPN staff writer David Hale saying that either a berth in the [autotag]College Football Playoff[/autotag] or a 7-5 record is possible. The Sooners were grouped with Arizona, Kansas State, Missouri, Tennessee, and Utah. A total of five SEC teams were placed in the three tiers above the Sooners, Tigers, and Volunteers.
Consider Oklahoma’s 2023 season. A 10-win campaign. A win over a playoff team. One loss came on a touchdown with less than a minute to play. The other, by three, when the offense was stuffed on a fourth-down try at midfield. The Sooners were ranked ninth in the final FPI and were top 10 in offensive and defensive efficiency. Now consider that Oklahoma returns 86% of its defensive snaps from last season and will feature a former five-star recruit at QB. Why is it, exactly, that so many folks seem to think Oklahoma is in for a tough transition to the SEC? – David Hale, ESPN
Hale would go on to take an overview of the strength of the SEC, stating that nine teams in the league have legitimate playoff aspirations. Each of those nine teams is inside the top 16 of ESPN’s SP+ rating, meaning one of those teams could likely finish in ninth in its own league, but among the top 25 best teams in the nation. Teams in the SEC that normally have very high expectations may have to settle for feeling lucky to make a bowl game, which doesn’t mean the team wasn’t good. That’s how strong the conference is. The toughest conference in the sport got even more difficult when Oklahoma and Texas joined.
“The bottom line is that some SEC fanbases that have long viewed eight wins as a failure might now be living in a world where it’s a best-case scenario,” Hale said.
That reality will likely happen to at least one of the top teams in the SEC. The Sooners have to do their best to make sure it’s not them. With [autotag]Danny Stutsman[/autotag] and [autotag]Billy Bowman[/autotag] returning to lead the defense and [autotag]Jackson Arnold[/autotag] stepping into the spotlight on offense, the expectations are high once again in Norman, even with the brutal realities of their new conference.
Contact/Follow us @SoonersWire on X, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Oklahoma news, notes, and opinions. You can also follow Aaron on X @AaronGelvin.