Oklahoma Football: Easy Path To The Big 12 Championship Game?

Now that the Red River Rivalry game is over and Texas has been vanquished, it's obvious to most college football "experts" that Oklahoma now has cleared their biggest hurdle of the season.

After all, either Texas or Oklahoma has won the Big 12 South every year since 1999 with the exception of the three-way tie of 2008.

Two years ago, Texas Tech also won a share of the division title but was never really included in the discussion of which team deserved to play in the conference championship game.

Oklahoma should be favored in every game it plays the rest of the year and has only to beat the rest of the patsies on its schedule to face Nebraska in a fitting final championship game for the conference.

They should waltz into the Big 12 Championship game as the representative from the South division undefeated and virtually untested for the rest of the season.

While I would like to jump on this bandwagon of conventional thought, I cannot.

If I were to agree with these "experts," then we would all be wrong.

A quick look shows that after their upcoming bye week, the road may actually get tougher for the Team in Crimson and Cream.

Their final seven games of the regular season are against teams with a combined record, at this point, of 23-7. Their first five opponents current record of 14-10 pales in comparison.

While they may have what should be two fairly easy home games against Iowa State (3-2) on October 16 and Texas Tech (2-2) on November 13, the rest of their opponents are not going to be pushovers.

They travel on the 23rd of October to Columbia, Missouri to play a Tigers squad that is currently undefeated (4-0) and ranked in the top 25. Missouri also has a season opening victory over the same Illinois team that took Ohio State to the wire last weekend.

Next up, on the 30th, a lame-duck Colorado team (3-1) travels to Norman with the confidence that comes from beating a perennial top SEC squad from Georgia.

Okay, so maybe this Bulldogs' team isn't up to it's normal standards but for the Buffaloes' to beat anyone is cause for celebration in the Rocky Mountain state. Dan Hawkins has his team playing their best ball since they beat freshman Sam Bradford and the rest of the Sooners in 2007 in Boulder.

Following that game, on November 6, OU travels to College Station, Texas to play at A&M (3-1). The Aggies only defeat was on a last second field goal in Stillwater. Following their own upcoming bye-week, more should be known about the quality of this Texas A&M team when they take on SEC power Arkansas at Jerry World in Arlington on October 9th.

On November 13, Texas Tech comes to Norman for what should be payback for the embarrassment the Sooners should still feel for the lopsided defeat a year ago in Lubbock. This Tech team just got beaten badly themselves in Ames, Iowa over the weekend, 52-38.

So much for the focus on defense new coach Tommy Tuberville promised. Just a quick question for Tech fans: If you could bring back Leach and fire the administration today, would you do it?

Oklahoma will then travel to Waco, Texas to take on probably the best Baylor team (3-1) to ever play in the Big 12. 

This Bears squad features a healthy and dangerous dual-threat quarterback in Robert Griffin. Baylor's only defeat to this point is at fifth-ranked TCU.

For the regular season finale, the Sooners travel to Stillwater for the annual Bedlam grudge-match against an undefeated (4-0) and ranked team from Oklahoma State.

Four or five of their final seven games are against teams that may end up being the best squads their respective schools have fielded in years. Colorado, Texas A&M, Baylor and Oklahoma State all are playing some pretty good football right now and sport a combined record of 18-3.

Iowa State could also have as good a team that they have had in a while themselves.

Missouri is also undefeated but unlikely to match the strength of the teams led by former QB Chase Daniels. It's abundantly clear that Tech, so far, is not up to the standards set by previous coach Mike Leach.

While it's easy to proclaim a team will win the remainder of their games, the problem is, at the same time, you are telling the other team they will lose.

This tends to do two things:

1. Make one team overconfident.

2. Make the other team mad.

That is not a good combination for a team that has had trouble playing full games to the best of their abilities, as the Sooners have shown to this point.

While it is not impossible by any stretch for Oklahoma to run the table through their remaining schedule, the odds are stacked against them pretty steeply.

OU may have the talent to beat any team they face but they must develop a killer instinct that has eluded them thus far.