ESPN thinks this is Oklahoma’s X-factor in 2024

The 2024 college football season is about a month and a half away. It’s a big one for the Oklahoma Sooners, as the football program enters year three under head coachBrent Venables. OU also departs the Big 12 in favor of the SEC, which has been in the works for three years, and became official on July 1st.

Venables has been around for two and a half years, preparing the Sooners for this moment, trying to get them SEC-ready.

Oklahoma knows that the road to winning national championships will be harder in the SEC, due in large part to the league’s competitive nature. The schedule OU faces every year in the SEC will be tougher than the hardest season in the Big 12 in recent years. Venables and his staff have been working hard to rebuild the program while also getting it positioned to compete in its new era.

This brings us to the biggest X-factor for Oklahoma this season, according to ESPN. Their staff laid out the make-or-break situations for each of their Top 25 teams (ESPN+) before fall camp.

ESPN has the Sooners ranked 18th overall and 8th in the SEC heading into fall camp. They believe the schedule for the Sooners in their new conference home is the biggest X-factor in Norman this year. Here’s what Dave Wilson had to say.

That SEC schedule. Tennessee, at Auburn, Texas (in Dallas), South Carolina, at Ole Miss, at Missouri, Alabama, at LSU. Colleague Bill Connelly points out that six of those eight are in the SP+ top 16 and while there is a nonconference game with Maine mixed in there, it just keeps coming when you look down the list. The Sooners won’t be intimidated, but they’ll need the depth to survive a season full of bowl games at the same time they’ll be breaking in a new quarterback in Jackson Arnold. – Wilson, ESPN

The schedule is brutal, no doubt. Oklahoma wasn’t done any favors by the folks who…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/espn-thinks-oklahoma-x-factor-210047293.html

Author : Sooners Wire

Publish date : 2024-07-17 21:00:47

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