Blatant Homerism: Scheduling is destiny
There’s a scene in the penultimate episode of the show “Breaking Bad” that sums up the 2024 season for the Oklahoma Sooners to me. Protagonist Walter White is attempting to negotiate with the head of a gang to spare his brother-in-law Hank’s life. Yet Hank knows bargaining is futile.
Much like Hank, OU’s fate this year was sealed well before the Sooners even kicked off. As soon as the injuries began piling up in the summer for the offensive line and receiving corps, the team was going to be fighting with a hand tied behind its back. But more importantly, the SEC had saddled OU with a brutally difficult schedule. Similarly situated teams to OU by and large didn’t fare well, either.
As the season played out, OU’s slate proved just as treacherous as it looked before the year. Four prominent analytical models – Sagarin, SP+, FPI and FEI – ranked the strength of the Sooners’ 2024 schedule in the regular season in the top 10 in the nation. Although OU played a forgiving batch of opponents outside of conference play, the Sooners faced eight teams in league play that ranked inside the top 33 in SP+. For comparison’s sake, OU drew two Big 12 opponents in 2023 that ranked inside the top 33 in SP+.
To get a better idea of how OU’s performance stacked up to teams with equally difficult schedules, I tried to identify a consensus of the toughest schedules in college football in 2024 at the end of the regular season using the four aforementioned systems’ SOS metrics. (Note: For FEI, I used the GLS metric which reflects “the number of losses a team one standard deviation above average would expect to have against the schedule.”) Seven teams ranked somewhere in the top 10 of each of the four models: Georgia, Oklahoma, Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Purdue and LSU. Meanwhile, UCLA, Michigan and Vanderbilt ranked in the top 10 in three of the four models, which gives us a solid group of 10.
By and large, this group had a rough go of it this year. The 10 squads had a combined record of 56-64 (46.7%) in the regular season. Six of them finished .500 or worse. Only two surpassed their projected win totals established by oddsmakers in the preseason.
Now take a look at the SOS rankings of this year’s College Football Playoff qualifiers.
Georgia aside, it seems fair to say the other 11 participants played demonstrably easier schedules. The median of the average SOS rankings of the 12 teams was around 40, which implies a schedule that fell in the bottom half of the four power conferences. Keep in mind that eight of the 12 qualifiers also played in conference championship games, giving their SOS numbers an extra bump by adding an additional contest against a strong opponent.
None of this excuses any of the problems with how OU played this season.
Sure, you could argue that the strength of their opponents contributed to the Sooners’ injury issues as the year wore on. And yes, they were likely forced into some inefficient strategic choices in an effort to keep pace when overmatched. Even so, OU’s utter ineptitude on offense all year had a big hand in five losses by double digits. Meanwhile, the hunt for yet another defensive coordinator speaks to Brent Venables’ track record as a manager – it doesn’t inspire confidence about the stability of the program under his watch.
But when it comes to wins and losses in a given year, the quality of your opponents obviously matters a lot. UGA survived a schedule on par with the one OU faced this year, winning 10 games and an SEC crown. The Bulldogs also boast one of the two or three best rosters in the entire sport.
OU didn’t bring a Georgia-like squad to battle this season. Frankly, the Sooners still need years of elite recruiting at or above their current levels to build a roster capable of satisfying their demanding fanbase with enough wins against a ‘24-type schedule. That would be true even if Nick Saban coached this team.
OU may see more Arkansas and Mississippi State and less LSU and Alabama once the league office reconfigures its members’ schedules after the 2025 campaign. (Conversely, programs like Texas that got off easy in the first year of the expanded SEC won’t have that same luxury every season.) But when the Sooners signed up for the SEC, they asked for this predicament. Their program’s long-term success hinges on constructing talent-rich rosters to endure that gauntlet.
Picks and Recs: Penzeys Rocky Mountain Seasoning
In what was likely my final cook using my Kamado Joe ceramic grill, I smoked a rib roast for a large group over the holidays. I consider it one of my go-to moves, and it turned out well.
My favorite part of the entire meal, though, was a dip I made with Penzeys Rocky Mountain Seasoning. Based out of Wisconsin, Penzeys has its own version of every spice you could ever need and a series of its own spice blends that can be used for a variety of dishes. The parmesan-centric Rocky Mountain Seasoning is meant to be a mix for salad dressing, but combining a bag of it with sour cream produced a spread that rocked when slathered on everything from raw vegetables to bread to roasted potatoes. Highly recommended this if you’re looking for an easy appetizer.