The 2024 college football season has begun, with Week 0 featuring appetizer platters on Saturday and Week 1 featuring football from Thursday through Monday over Labor Day weekend.
With just a week until the Oklahoma Sooners begin their season, expectations are high for their inaugural season in the SEC. Third-year head coach Brent Venables believes his team is poised to excel defensively and is hoping the offense performs well as well.
Nationally, the Sooners began the season ranked 16th in both the NBA LBM Coaches Poll and the Associated Press, a number that would rise after No. 10 Florida State was upset by Georgia Tech in the college football season opener. OU finished 8th in the SEC Media Poll.
ESPN took on the challenge of ranking all 134 FBS teams into 24 different tiers (ESPN+) before most schools had even begun the new semester.
Oklahoma fell into Tier 4, where ESPN staff writer David Hale said either a College Football Playoff berth or a 7-5 record is possible. The Sooners were placed in the same group as Arizona, Kansas State, Missouri, Tennessee and Utah. A total of five SEC teams were placed in the top three tiers with the Sooners, Tigers and Volunteers.
Consider Oklahoma’s 2023 season. A 10-win campaign. A win against a playoff team. One loss where they allowed a touchdown with under a minute left. The other loss was a three-point loss when the offense was blocked on a fourth-down try at midfield. The Sooners ranked ninth in the final FPI and in the top 10 in offensive and defensive efficiency. Consider that Oklahoma returns 86% of last season’s defensive snaps and starts with a former five-star recruit at quarterback. Why do so many think Oklahoma will have a tough time in the transition to the SEC? — David Hale, ESPN
Hale put the strength of the SEC in perspective, saying nine teams in the league have a shot at making the playoffs. All nine teams are ranked in the top 16 of ESPN’s SP+ ratings, with one likely to finish ninth in the league but in the top 25 in the country. SEC teams are usually held to such high expectations that they might have to consider themselves lucky to even make it to a bowl game, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t good; that’s how strong the conference is. The toughest conference in the sport just got even tougher with the addition of Oklahoma and Texas.
“At the end of the day, some SEC fans who have long viewed eight wins as a failure may now be living in a world where that’s the best-case scenario,” Hale said.
That reality is likely for at least one of the SEC’s top teams, and the Sooners must do everything in their power to make sure it doesn’t happen to them. With Danny Stutzman and Billy Bowman returning as defensive leaders and Jackson Arnold stepping into the offensive spotlight, expectations are high again for Norman despite the harsh realities of a new conference.
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