Oklahoma football’s welcome to the SEC this fall includes a murderers’ row conference schedule that clearly is one of the most difficult of the 2024 college football season and may be toughest the Sooners have encountered in 129 years playing the game.
Only South Carolina among the eight SEC teams Oklahoma faces in the coming season is not ranked ahead of the Sooners in the recent SEC Preseason Media Poll. The only break the SEC schedulers afforded the Crimson and Cream in their inaugural season in the SEC was not having to play presumptive No. 1 Georgia.
The Sooners host Tennessee, South Carolina and Alabama in Norman, but go on the road to play Ole Miss, Auburn, Missouri and LSU, one of the most difficult road venues in all of college football. And, of course, there is always the annual rivalry game with Texas, the other new SEC member this season, during the Texas State Fair in Dallas.
You would think at least a couple of those games on Oklahoma’s 2024 schedule would make a list of the 24 most meaningful games of the upcoming season. That would depend also, I guess, on who is putting together such a list. Well, the gang at 247Sports — or perhaps its was college football writer Brad Crawford all by his lonesome — endeavored to put out such a list. Sorry to say, Sooner fans, only one Oklahoma game made the list.
Now, to be fair, the article that reveals the so-called 24 most meaningful games in 2024 qualifies the ranking as “games with conference-title and playoff implications.” Most all of the preseason projections have the Sooners in finishing in the middle of the pack in the SEC race, but with the brutal schedule they have, they are clearly playing teams in the thick of the conference title hunt.
Not surprisingly, the 247Sports version of the “most meaningful games’ list is heavily dominated by team from the SEC and Big Ten. Eighteen of the top 24 games include teams from at least one of those two Power 4 conferences. A further breakdown reveals that a dozen of the games involve at least one SEC team and nine are SEC matchups.
The Red River Rivalry game makes the list at No. 9, but that is it as far as Oklahoma is concerned.
Alabama, projected to be in the top five when the 2024 Associated Press and Coaches Poll Top-25 rankings come out in August, appears in four of the matchups ranked in the 247Sports most-meaningful games of the 2024 season, including a home game at Oklahoma on Nov. 23.
LSU appears three times, but not its game with OU at LSU to close out the regular season. Ole Miss has two games ranked among the 24 most-meaningful matchups during the 2024 season, but the Rebels home date with Oklahoma on Oct. 26 is not one of them.
It’s not so much that the Sooners’ 2024 schedule is worthy of four or five games with top national billing, but since Oklahoma plays five of the teams included in the 247Sports ranking, you would think that the Sooners’ matchup with Alabama, LSU, Ole Miss and Tennessee would be deserving of consideration — at the very least one of those marquee games
For example, do you believe LSU vs. USC in Las Vegas is a better or more meaningful game than Oklahoma vs. LSU in Baton Rouge would be? Or how about Alabama at Wisconsin instead of Alabama at OU? And here’s another: Utah at Oklahoma State or Oklahoma at Ole Miss?
I guess the real message here, according to 247Sports, is that Oklahoma has one of the most difficult schedules in the SEC this season, but only one conference game on the schedule — the OU-Texas game — has any real impact on the SEC championship race or College Football Playoff considerations.
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Publish date : 2024-07-30 08:30:10
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