Oklahoma downplays pressure after Playoff failures
ATLANTA – Out of the 130 programs that play in the Football Bowl Subdivision, there are probably 128 that would trade places with the University of Oklahoma if they could. Any discussion about the fact it's been 19 years since the Sooners’ last national championship or that they’re sitting on an 0-for-3 record in College Football Playoff games must start there.
Which is why the look athletics director Joe Castiglione’s face was a mixture of bemused and puzzled when this question was raised Wednesday as Oklahoma prepared to play in Saturday’s Peach Bowl as a two-touchdown underdog to No. 1 LSU: Will there ever come a point where continually making the Playoff isn’t good enough – and where it even might get a little bit boring – without a championship to show for it?
“I would say absolutely not,” Castiglione said with a slight laugh after marinating on the question for all of two nanoseconds. “Never.”
As the man who jump-started Oklahoma’s renaissance by hiring Bob Stoops and then oversaw the seamless transition to Lincoln Riley, nobody has a better appreciation for the consistent level of excellence his program has achieved since 2000: A dozen Big 12 titles, four appearances in the national title game and now four Playoff berths in six years.
To be that good for that long in any era of college football, much less this one? Not easy to do. If not for Nick Saban’s dynasty at Alabama and the recent Clemson run, you could argue Oklahoma has been the best overall program of the millennium.
“It’s a significant achievement,” Castiglione said.
But in the Playoff era, what will achievements without titles really mean? Oklahoma is in an elite group of four programs with multiple CFP appearances. It is the only one that is yet to win a game, and at some point that isn’t just a coincidence or a narrative but rather a burden the entire organization has to carry.
Even this year, the perception of the Playoff field is that there are three teams with a good chance to win the championship and then Oklahoma off to the side as the guest that was invited to the party only because a fourth team had to be there.
Most of that is owed to Oklahoma’s odd season in which it lost to a middling Kansas State team and then appeared to be hanging on by its fingernails at the end of the season to go 12-1 and win the Big 12 title. But the Sooners’ history in the Playoff, with pretty decisive losses to Alabama last year and Clemson in 2015, also factors into the perception that they’re the lightweight of the group.
Riley, to no one’s surprises, pushes back on the idea that Oklahoma’s Playoff performances suggest that there’s some big gap his team is facing once it steps up from the Big 12 to facing top SEC teams. The Sooners could have, and probably should have, beaten Georgia in the semifinals two years ago, losing a 54-48 double overtime classic after building an early 31-14 lead. And even in last year’s 45-34 loss, they were just as good or better than Alabama for three quarters – but it didn’t matter because they fell behind 28-0 in the game’s first 17 minutes.
“I think we’ve done pretty decent, but I think the view you guys have or maybe fans have about looking at it over a multi-year period, that’s just not our view,” Riley said. “I think we’re capable. You always want to go in as equipped and loaded as you possibly can, and we’ve looked back not as a result of playoff games but knowing where our program is at that we can continue to get better and there’s steps we can take. I think we’ve taken some of those, but it’s an ongoing process.”
Riley is no dummy. Though Baker Mayfield’s brilliance might have lifted Oklahoma to the title in 2017 had a play here or there gone differently against Georgia, he knew that the Sooners had to get better on defense to consistently compete at this level. And they have done that under first-year coordinator Alex Grinch, improving to 42nd nationally in yards per play allowed (5.29) from 102nd last season and 82nd the season before.
We’ll find out Saturday whether the talent is there to consistently slow down a team like LSU, which leads the nation in total offense. Over the long haul, all indications are that Riley is recruiting well enough to keep putting Oklahoma in this position and perhaps eventually knock down that door. “I believe that,” Castiglione said. “I believe that. We’ve got to get this group of guys the best chance to succeed but we're also constantly looking at the next two, three, four years for what we need to do so this team is in the discussion year in and year out, everything from retaining great coaches to recruiting to all the different things to do for players through the year to help them be ready and develop. I can say this: We aren't going away.”
But neither are the expectations, and when a coach makes the Playoff each of his first three years as the face of the program, it’s only natural that the excitement level for making it to this point gets a little lower every time and the pressure to break through creeps up. Never forget that even after Stoops won a national title in his second year as head coach, the fact he couldn’t quite get that second one eventually turned the “Big Game Bob” moniker into a taunt.
“It’s tough because there’s only one of them that wins it at the end of the year,” said co-offensive coordinator Cale Gundy, who has been an assistant at Oklahoma since 1999. “This is Year Six of the CFP and only been 11 different teams out of 130 that ever played in this deal. It’s tough to get there and tough to get on top. You don’t want to take it for granted but there's a hunger that’s out there. There's a hunger with the team, the fans, students, players, alumni. And at Oklahoma you have that hunger every single year."
The Sooners get yet another chance at it on Saturday. And though few expect this one to turn out much different than the previous three, they insist going 0for-the-Playoff isn’t in danger of becoming the defining characteristic of their program. It’s too hard to get here in the first place to let that happen, they say. And given the alternative of not making it at all like nearly every other school that plays college football, they’d much rather have the opportunity.