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Welcome to the SEC, Sooners. Hope Lindsey St. is ready for Saturday mornings. You ain’t seen nothing like what’s coming.
In anticipation of its move to the SEC, Oklahoma revealed last August that tailgating was returning to the main road that runs through the heart of campus. You can stand on Lindsey and view the south end of Gaylord Family-Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, but it had been inaccessible to fans on gameday since 2017. Fans wanted the change, and OU made it happen as part of a broader tailgating refresh made specifically for the SEC move.
When you’ve got a home slate that’ll bring Tennessee and Alabama to Norman for crucial conference clashes, you’ve got to be prepared.
OU believes it is.
Sooner fans will be treated well in their school’s inaugural SEC season. OU plays the best of the best in the conference. Compared to their hated rivals and College Football Playoff-hopefuls, the Texas Longhorns, it’s almost laughable to consider the slate OU was handed.
ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI) gives 9 SEC schools at least a 20% chance to make the CFP in 2024. Oklahoma is 1 of the 9. Oklahoma plays 6 of the other 8. Four of those games are away from Norman.
FPI gives OU a 37% chance to make the CFP but only a 5.1% chance to win its conference. The Sooners have the seventh-toughest schedule in the nation. I have my gripes with FPI, but the model feels pretty spot-on in its assessment of the Sooners. It projects an 8-4 record.
If an 8-win team is going to make the 12-team CFP, it might be Oklahoma to do it. The Sooners could be one of the SEC’s most competitive teams in 2024 and finish with 5 losses.
In many ways, the job done by Brent Venables and his staff in 2024 won’t be judged by the wins and losses. That much was made clear by Oklahoma’s decision to extend the head coach and raise his salary ahead of Year 3. No, Venables will not find himself on the hot seat regardless of what happens in their debut campaign in the SEC. Yes, the Sooners are happy with the direction of the program.
Oklahoma athletic director Joe Castiglione knows what faces his young coach. He knows the challenge at hand. Conference changes are hard and there’s never enough prep time. Year 1 will feel like 11 nonconference games for the coaching staff, and the annual heavyweight fight with Texas at the Cotton Bowl.
And yet expectations are high for OU after a 10-win campaign in 2023. The program moved on from veteran quarterback Dillon Gabriel, said goodbye to offensive coordinator Jeff Lebby, and parted ways with defensive coordinator Ted Roof. But they’re popping up in most preseason top-15s. (Eighth in FPI, 15th in SP+.)
The Sooners are +500 to make the CFP at FanDuel — they have the same odds as Liberty and are less likely to reach the CFP than USC (+410). FanDuel gives the Sooners (+7000) a 1.4% chance to win the national championship.
ESPN Bet and bet365 have the same price for a bet on OU to make the CFP. DraftKings views the outcome as slightly more likely than other books (+450). Caesars is the most favorable (+350). None of the major US books give OU better than a 2.8% chance to win the title next year.
They’re a longshot, and they should be. As good as the defense projects to be (more on them in a bit), the offense got a total makeover this offseason and will be led by a first-time starter at quarterback.
OU has high hopes for second-year quarterback Jackson Arnold. He was a 5-star recruit in the 2023 class and got his feet wet with a start against Arizona in last year’s Alamo Bowl.
The Sooners had the fourth-best scoring mark in the country (41.7 points a game) and finished 10th in offensive efficiency (6.8 yards) last year with Gabriel and Lebby running the show. They don’t expect philosophical changes with Seth Littrell calling plays and Arnold orchestrating things, but the big question is whether they can be as efficient.
Arnold has one of college football’s budding big-play stars to throw to at receiver. Nic Anderson entered the postseason last fall leading the country in yards per reception and set a program record for touchdown catches by a freshman with 10. They added Deion Burks from the portal, a slot guy who could be one of the more impactful transfers of the offseason. And the spring saw the tight end room get a ton of pub. But everyone on the offensive line is new.
And Arnold will make young mistakes. (He’s a true sophomore with 6 appearances.) He was picked off 3 times in the Alamo Bowl against Arizona. He opened the game with 2 picks among his first 8 passes, settled in a bit, but then watched Arizona rattle off 25 unanswered points.
He has enough talent to put Oklahoma in positions to steal games on the road next season. But if he shows his youth (i.e., throwing interceptions, missing reads) at the Cotton Bowl, or in Death Valley, or in Columbia, Oklahoma will not win games.
But Arnold will have his opportunities because Oklahoma’s defense has quality everywhere. They were 33rd nationally last season in defensive havoc rate and in the top 25 at generating takeaway opportunities. But explosive plays were readily available against Roof’s defense.
The defensive front got bigger. Two studs return to organize things behind that front. Linebacker Danny Stutsman was an All-American and Lombardi semifinalist after posting 104 tackles, 16 tackles for loss, 3 pass breakups, 3 sacks, 2 forced fumbles, and an interception. Defensive back Billy Bowman Jr. was a first-team all-conference pick with 6 interceptions and 4 pass breakups. Those 2 have combined to make 54 combined starts for the Sooners and you won’t find many better linebacker/safety duos in the sport.
They finished the season 48th nationally in scoring and pivoted from Roof to Zac Alley. Growth from a few youngsters would make a good group exceptional. David Stone popping right away would make a good group exceptional. There’s a very probable world in which the 2024 Oklahoma defense looks like a trademark Venables defense.
That sets the floor relatively high if we’re talking about being competitive in the SEC. That just might not correlate with wins right away.
“You look at a team like Auburn, and they were 6-7 last year, but they take a No. 1 Georgia team to the last drive of the game and rush for more than 200 yards, and then late in the year, Alabama throws a Hail Mary in the end zone to beat them,” Venables told ESPN’s Chris Low. “Those are two games that sort of tell you what the SEC is. Auburn played really close games against the two teams that played for the SEC championship, and Alabama made the playoff. Auburn finished somewhere in the middle of the conference.
“I’ve never been in a league where you’ve got to play the depth of the teams we will every single week. You don’t concede anything, but in the same breath, you have tremendous respect for what it’s going to take to be successful.”
The 2024 season will be a crucial data point for Venables in determining how ready his team is to contend for championships in their new home.
ESPN Bet has the win total at 7.5. I think Oklahoma wins 8 or 9 if Arnold plays to his potential. In the SEC, and with the teams on OU’s schedule, that could very well be good enough to make the CFP. Oklahoma signed top-10 overall classes in 2021, 2022, and 2023, with a top-10 high school haul in 2024, per the 247 Composite. While it’s probably true that Texas is more ready for the SEC, that doesn’t mean OU isn’t.
But the Longhorns are a threat to win the Playoff if they get there. Oklahoma isn’t. Yet.
Verdict: Pretender, and that’s fine
Best value for a title bet on Oklahoma: +7500 (via ESPN Bet)
NJ, PA, VA, MD, WV, MA, KS, KY, LA, TN, NC, CO, AZ, IA, IL, IN, MI, OH
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Additional entries in the “Contender or Pretender” series:
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
