Oklahoma’s season has drifted a long way from where it started, and the latest bowl projections reflect that slide. What began with hopes of a return to the College Football Playoff has turned into a scramble just to keep a remarkable bowl streak alive.
The Sooners are sitting on four losses entering November, with four games left in the regular season and five weeks remaining before the CFP bracket is revealed. That leaves Brent Venables and his team needing to split their final four games simply to become bowl eligible.
Oklahoma hasn’t missed a bowl since 1998, when the John Blake era ended and Bob Stoops was brought in to take over. That run now hangs by a thread.
Under the SEC’s postseason setup, the playoff teams are removed from the bowl mix first. The Citrus Bowl gets the top SEC team that doesn’t make the CFP.
After that comes a group of six bowls - the Gator Bowl, Las Vegas Bowl, Liberty Bowl, Music City Bowl, ReliaQuest Bowl and Texas Bowl - with no set order. Those games work with the SEC and school officials to sort out the best matchups.
Then the Birmingham Bowl and Gasparilla Bowl choose from any remaining bowl-eligible SEC teams that still need a destination.
In USA TODAY Sports’ latest projections, Erick Smith has Oklahoma landing in the Las Vegas Bowl on December 31st. That bowl alternates between the SEC and Big Ten each year, with the SEC getting even years and the Big Ten getting odd years. The same pattern applies to the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, with the SEC in odd years and the Big Ten in even years.
Smith’s projected opponent for Oklahoma is Washington. The Huskies would be filling the legacy Pac-12 spot for the game, even though they now play in the Big Ten. Former Pac-12 teams remain eligible for Pac-12-affiliated bowls, along with the schools that are still in the league.
Oklahoma and Washington have met three times before. The first was the 1985 Orange Bowl, played after the 1984 season, when Washington beat the Sooners 28-17 on New Year’s Day and kept Oklahoma from sharing in the national title. BYU ended up winning it all that year, while Oklahoma captured the national championship the next season, its third under Barry Switzer.
The Sooners won the other two meetings. They beat Washington 37-20 in Norman in 2006, then rolled to a 55-14 win in Seattle in 2008.
A Las Vegas Bowl trip would have felt like a letdown before the season started. Now, it would mean Oklahoma did enough in November to keep its 28-year bowl streak going.
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