Oklahoma Football: Sooners Getting Screwed by AP Top 25 Pollsters

Realistically, the Oklahoma Sooners and their fans don't have any reason to complain.

They are 4-0, behind two Heisman Trophy candidates in Landry Jones and Ryan Broyles, and are still the top-ranked team in the Coaches' Poll, putting them on track to play in the BCS National Championship Game in New Orleans.

And, though they've dropped to No. 2 in the AP Poll, the press has no say in how the BCS shakes out and hasn't since 2004.

Thus, the Sooners' case for the crystal football isn't hurt in the slightest by LSU's ascension to the top of the AP polls.

So what's my issue here?

Honestly, I don't have that much of a problem with LSU being in the hunt for the top spot in the polls, but the extent to which the press put the Tigers ahead of the Sooners on Sunday, with 42 first-place votes for the former against just 12 for the latter, is just plain ignorant and disrespectful.

There's no doubt that Les Miles' squad has the more impressive resume through four weeks of play,  if not the most impressive in all of college football.

The Tigers have played three games against ranked teams outside of Baton Rouge and have triumphed quite handily in each, winning by an average of 17.3 points per game against Oregon, Mississippi State and West Virginia.

All the while, LSU's defense has been as impressive as any in college football, Alabama's included, while the offense, behind quarterback Jarrett Lee and running backs Spencer Ware and Michael Ford, has improved steadily from week to week.

As such, the Tigers do, in fact, have a legitimate case as the No. 1 team in the country.

But so do the Sooners, even if the voters might not all be quite so impressed.

You could say (and plenty of voters probably have) that Oklahoma's win over Florida State in Tallahassee in Week 3 is nowhere near as impressive as it so recently seemed, not after the Seminoles' loss to Clemson on Saturday.

Then again, it's not as though the 'Noles got blown out in Death Valley, where Auburn's 17-game win streak came to an end.

In fact, FSU played a close game with the Tigers, falling by only five points despite the absence of star quarterback EJ Manuel. With that in mind, the Sooners' 23-13 victory over the Seminoles still looks good on paper.

You might also say that OU's victory at home against Missouri was disappointingly close, that the Sooners should've blown out the Tigers, sans Blaine Gabbert and Aldon Smith, to exact revenge for last year's loss in Columbia.

Maybe so, but this year's Mizzou team is better than most people realize. The Tigers have a dynamic, dual-threat quarterback in James Franklin and the nation's fifth-leading rusher in Henry Josey. They also came agonizingly close to beating a quality Arizona State team in Tempe.

Hence, even the Sooners' Big 12 should still be seen as a quality win on their ledger.

And let's not forget about all the talent the Sooners have on both sides of the ball, particularly Jones and Broyles on offense and Travis Lewis on defense. This Oklahoma team is as impressive as any in the NCAA and, frankly, the polls still bear that out.

The Sooners will have to wait at least a week to make their own case, with Ball State coming to Norman this Saturday.

However, with the Red River Rivalry game against No. 17 Texas coming up the following week, Oklahoma will have the perfect opportunity to strut their stuff with all the college football writers, in their infinite wisdom, watching the top team in the country not pleading its case for supremacy, but rather asserting it.

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