CBS Sports thinks OU could miss the postseason entirely for the first time since 1998.
The Oklahoma Sooners will take on the Ole Miss Rebels on Saturday, looking to break a two game losing streak and get back in the win column.
It’s also an important game for OU’s postseason hopes, as at 4-3 the Sooners are suddenly in grave danger of missing a bowl game. They’ve got to find two more wins on their schedule in order to get to 6-6, otherwise, they’ll miss the postseason for the first time since 1998.
CBS Sports college football witter Will Backus released his Bowl Eligibility Heat Check on Friday as we head into week nine of the college football season. Plenty of big names are in danger of missing a bowl game, and Oklahoma was, of course, included in Backus’ piece.
“No one necessarily expected Oklahoma to hit the ground running when it arrived in the SEC, but it was also hard to anticipate that the Sooners would be mentioned in the same breath as the Mississippi States of the conference (no offense to Mississippi State, at least the Bulldogs know how to actually score the football),” Backus said. “Oklahoma’s offense has been such a disaster that the Sooners let offensive coordinator Seth Littrell go just seven games into his tenure as a full-time assistant. [autotag]Brent Venables[/autotag] certainly hit the nail on the head when he called the offense an “abomination” — Oklahoma scored a combined 12 points in its last two losses to Texas and South Carolina. Traditionally, being two wins away from a bowl is a decent spot to be in one week out from November. But then you look at Oklahoma’s schedule, which features one game that it should win and four that — if recent results are any indication — it would be lucky to compete in.”
Of course, those four games where OU will be huge underdogs are Ole Miss, Missouri, Alabama, and LSU. It’s not that the Sooners couldn’t beat those teams if they played like they were expected to when the season began. No one has any faith in the offense right now to do anything useful or helpful to win football games.
A home game against Maine, out of the FCS, should be one of the two wins that the Sooners need, but Oklahoma is going to have to pull off a major upset somewhere along the line if they want to play in a bowl game. It’s an unfamiliar spot for this proud program, to say the least.
Venables’ team will have four chances to do so, beginning in Oxford, Mississippi, at 11:00 a.m. on ESPN against the Rebels.
