The 2024 college football season has begun. Week Zero featured an appetizer platter on Saturday before Week 1 features nonstop football from Thursday to Monday on Labor Day weekend.

With less than a week to go before the Oklahoma Sooners’ season begins, the excitement for their first season in the SEC is palpable. Third-year head coach Brent Venables believes he has OU ready to shine on defense, and he hopes the offense can impress as well.

Nationally, the Sooners were ranked No. 16 by both the US LBM Coaches Poll and the Associated Press to begin the season. That number is expected to rise following No. 10 Florida State’s surprise loss to Georgia Tech to open the college football season. OU was ranked No. 8 in the SEC Media Poll.

ESPN has taken on the challenge of ranking all 134 FBS teams into 24 different tiers (ESPN+) before the year begins for most schools.

Oklahoma landed in Tier 4, and ESPN editor David Hale said either a College Football Playoff berth or a 7-5 record was possible. The Sooners were grouped with Arizona, Kansas State, Missouri, Tennessee and Utah. In total, five SEC teams were placed in the three ranks above the Sooners, Tigers and Volunteers.

Consider Oklahoma’s 2023 season. A 10-win season. A win over a playoff team. One loss came by a touchdown with less than a minute left in the game. The other, by three points, when the offense was stopped at midcourt on a fourth-down attempt. The Sooners ranked ninth in the final FPI and were in the top 10 in offensive and defensive efficiency. Now consider that Oklahoma returns 86% of its defensive snaps from last season and will use a former five-star recruit as QB. Why exactly do so many people seem to think Oklahoma faces a difficult transition to the SEC? – David Hale, ESPN

Hale then gave an overview of the strength of the SEC, stating that nine teams in the league have legitimate playoff aspirations. Each of those nine teams is ranked in the top 16 of ESPN’s SP+ ratings, meaning one of those teams could likely finish ninth in their own league, but among the top 25 teams in the nation. Teams in the SEC that typically have very high expectations may have to settle for feeling lucky if they make it to a bowl game, which doesn’t mean the team wasn’t good. That’s how strong the conference is. The toughest conference in the sport got even tougher when Oklahoma and Texas joined.

“The bottom line is that some SEC fan bases that have long viewed eight wins as a failure may now live in a world where that is the best-case scenario,” Hale said.

That reality is likely to happen to at least one of the SEC’s top teams. The Sooners must do their best to make sure it’s not them. With Danny Stutsman and Billy Bowman returning as defensive leaders and Jackson Arnold stepping into the spotlight on offense, expectations are once again high in Norman despite the brutal reality of their new league.

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