The offseason is coming to a close for teams across the college football landscape. The time for talking is almost over. The time to prove it on the field is upon us.
One team that has heard all of the offseason chatter is the [autotag]Oklahoma Sooners[/autotag]. Whether it’s they aren’t good enough or they will have a bounce-back season, no one knows what to think of the Sooners.
CBS Sports and its team of experts made their final predictions for the Big 12 in the 2023 season. And on the question of who is overrated heading into the season, a number of analysts chose Oklahoma.
The Brent Venables era at Oklahoma started with high hopes, but the first season ended with a thud. The Sooners finished 6-7 overall (3-6 in the Big 12 along with Kansas and West Virginia), but the expectations are high again this season. Texas is the favorite, but Oklahoma is in the preseason rankings and among the teams expected to challenge. I’m not fully buying into that, at least not yet. Venables still has to show he can get this team to play up to that level. — Jerry Palm (Barrett Sallee, Shehan Jeyarajah, Will Backus) CBS Sports
Look, Oklahoma fans aren’t going to like this, but everything they said is fair. Now, would I say they are overrated? Probably not. They just have a lot to prove. But it is absolutely fair to say after a 6-7 season, let’s wait and see how this season plays out.
The eight experts also picked how the conference would shake out. Oklahoma had one first-place vote, two second-place votes, two fourth-place votes, one sixth-place vote, one seventh-place vote and one ninth-place vote.
Oklahoma fans better hope the people who picked them sixth or worse are dead wrong because the situation would get dicey in Norman. But again, you can’t get mad at the experts for feeling this way.
At the end of the day, this is what happens when you go 6-7 with a first-year head coach.
[lawrence-auto-related count=5 category=1366]
Contact/Follow us @SoonersWire on Twitter, and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Oklahoma news, notes, and opinions. You can also follow Jaron on Twitter @JaronSpor.