3 reasons Oklahoma won’t win the national championship this year
By John Buhler
![Lincoln Riley, Oklahoma Sooners. [Bryan Terry/The Oklahoman]](https://images2.minutemediacdn.com/image/upload/c_fill,w_1080,ar_16:9,f_auto,q_auto,g_auto/shape%2Fcover%2Fsport%2F7a9d857559b9e65334d85aac0dc27b636216e778039bb319b2efeab767fbfcd0.jpg "Lincoln Riley, Oklahoma Sooners. [Bryan Terry/The Oklahoman]")
The Oklahoma football team should be good, but maybe not quite good enough to win the College Football Playoff this season.
While the Oklahoma football team should be one of the handful of teams with serious College Football Playoff aspirations this year, the Sooners may not have what it takes to win their first national championship in over 20 years.
This will be Lincoln Riley’s fifth season as the Oklahoma head football coach. Though the Sooners have won the Big 12 each of the last six seasons, they have yet to win a national semifinals game during the College Football Playoff era. Heisman Trophy front-running quarterback Spencer Rattler hopes to change that in 2021. However, it will be a tough road to hoe for the Oklahoma program.
Here are three reasons why Oklahoma will not win its first national title of the Riley era this year.
Oklahoma football: 3 reasons why Sooners will not win national title in 2021
3. Iowa State leads a strong top-half of potential Big 12 challengers
Are the Sooners one of eight teams with serious College Football Playoff aspirations this year? Oh, absolutely, and that is fantastic. The only problem is they play in a conference with another team capable of making it in Matt Campbell’s Iowa State Cyclones. While Iowa State may not have enough firepower to win multiple playoff games, they make the top-half of the Big 12 menacing.
Despite not getting a team into the playoff last year, the Big 12 should have about four or five excellent teams at the top of it, including Oklahoma and Iowa State. Oklahoma State is usually a ranked team. Texas should be much-improved under new head coach Steve Sarkisian. And expect some team like Baylor, Kansas State, TCU or West Virginia to massively overachieve this season.
So what this all means is Oklahoma is not expected to run the Big 12 gauntlet to a perfect 9-0. If the Sooners do it, beat Nebraska in the non-conference and win in Arlington, they could be the top seed in the tournament. The problem is the regular-season slate ahead has the potential to be unforgiving. Keep in mind the Sooners lost two Big 12 games last year to K-State and Iowa State.
While they do have the schedule to make up for a loss, we have to anticipate they will suffer one.