Oklahoma Football: Can the Sooners Overcome One of Nation's Toughest Schedules?

ESPN recently released a preseason top 25 poll for the 2012 college football season.

As I gazed over the rankings and saw the Sooners land at the No. 5 position, I thought to myself—that seems about right.

I wasn't too shocked to see the usual suspects—USC, Alabama, LSU—ahead of the Sooners in the rankings. What I was amazed at was the number of opponents on the Sooners' upcoming schedule that also landed on this all-too-early preseason ranking.

Six of the Sooners' 12 scheduled opponents appeared on this top 25 list.

Granted, we are discussing college football rankings in May; this still forces a double take from me.

I knew the Sooners would have a tough road to the Big 12 championship this year—let alone the national championship—but is this year's gauntlet of opponents going to be too tough to overcome?

After the Sooners' first two non-conference games against UTEP and Florida A&M, you would be hard-pressed to find another "gimme" game on the schedule.

Oklahoma finally gets OSU back in Norman this year along with KSU, KU and Baylor.

But it's not really the home games I am too concerned with.

Sure, Texas Tech came into Norman last year and knocked off an uninterested Sooner squad, but let's be honest—the odds of that happening again are pretty unlikely.

Notre Dame is listed as a preseason top 25 team and will also be coming to Norman. While the Irish should prove to be a solid mid-season test for the Sooners, they shouldn't be too much to overcome playing at home.

The Fighting Irish are likely still a few years away from returning to prominence.

Baylor also travels back to Norman this year, but an RGIII-less unit shouldn't pose too many threats to the Sooners at home either.

However, trips to Lubbock have been less than favorable to the Sooners in recent years.

Make no mistake, this is a Red Raider team that the Sooners should beat, but I have learned to never write off games played in Lubbock.

The Red River rivalry follows, and we all know that no matter how bad either school is, this game is always highly competitive. The Sooners may have the superior team, but the Longhorns haven't forgotten the beating the Sooners have put on them in recent years and are poised to return the top defensive unit in the conference.

Normally a game played in Ames, Iowa would not be of much concern, but it does have the potential to be a trap game featuring a hungry Iowa State program eager to build off its huge win over OSU last year.

Now we get to the worst of it.

On Nov. 17, the Sooners end the year on a three-game tear that includes playing at West Virginia, home against OSU and then back on the road at TCU.

While most of the elite talent from last year's OSU team has been shipped off to the NFL, the Cowboys embarrassed the Sooners last year en route to their first Big 12 title and should not be taken lightly.

Road games in Morgantown and Fort Worth at the end of the season are definitely not destinations to look forward to either.

Bleacher Report's own Matt Smith ranked the Sooners' strength of schedule at No. 10 nationally, and Scout.com listed them at No. 7.

I can't help but wonder if there are too many tough games on the Sooners' schedule for them to overcome.

The road to a national championship usually requires a perfect record, but getting through the Sooners' schedule unscathed would surely be a daunting task for nearly any program in the nation.