The Oklahoma Sooners play one of the nation’s toughest schedules in 2025. After a daunting slate in 2024 led to a 6-7 record, OU will play the same eight conference opponents this season. In addition, the Sooners will face Michigan in one of the season’s premier non-conference matchups. Add that all up, and you’ve got a tall task if you’re head coach Brent Venables.
Of course, the Sooners aren’t the only team in the SEC that faces a difficult schedule. According to ESPN and their metrics, all 16 teams in the league have one of the 20 hardest schedules in the country. That’s life in the SEC, as Oklahoma quickly found out in 2024. The conference’s schedule-makers didn’t do them any favors, especially when compared to rival Texas’ first two schedules in the league.
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As a new season is nearly upon us, ESPN’s David Hale took the time to rank all 136 FBS teams for the 2025 season into 20 different tiers ahead of the new year. Despite last season’s disappointing nature and the brutal schedule the Sooners will play, Hale has them in his third tier, along with five other SEC teams. He named Tier 3 “Someone in the SEC has to lose games, too”.
No one in the SEC has an easy ride to the playoff, which makes Tier 3 likely to include at least two playoff teams and at least two schools that fire their coaches, and the difference between those camps will be a few plays one way or the other. The SEC is designed to eat itself, which is one of the reasons it has pushed so hard for increased playoff access. There’s simply not a scenario in which every school that invests in winning, has a playoff-caliber roster and features fans who expect to make a playoff run will actually do so. – Hale ESPN.
Hale grouped Oklahoma in with Florida, Ole Miss, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas A&M in his third tier. Only Texas (Tier 1a), Georgia (Tier 1b), Alabama (Tier 2), and LSU (Tier 2) were ranked in higher tiers than OU. However, Hale believes it’s the Gators, not the Sooners, who face the most difficult schedule in America in 2025.
Oklahoma hasn’t shied away from their schedule in the lead-up to this season, and they aren’t running from the expectations in their second season in the SEC. This is the new reality in their new conference, and they joined forces with the SEC, knowing the pros and the cons.
If the Sooners are one of the big surprises of this college football season and make a run at the College Football Playoff, they’ll have done so against arguably the hardest 12-game slate in the sport in 2025.
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This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: Where are Sooners in FBS tier list rankings from ESPN?
