The 2025 college football season has come and gone, and with the vast majority of recruiting and transfer portal roster building madness behind us as well, a long offseason awaits before we get games again in late-August.
As teams across the country are beginning to take shape, it’s time for everyone, naturally, to start speculating about what things will look like come this fall. That includes Josh Pate, the host of “Josh Pate’s College Football Show”, who released his “Way-Too-Early Top 25” for the 2026 season on Sunday.
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Pate included the Oklahoma Sooners in the top 10 of his rankings, placing them at No. 9 on his list. That puts OU as the fourth-highest ranked team in the SEC, behind only Texas, Georgia, and Texas A&M. In total, nine teams from the SEC made Pate’s top 25, with LSU, Alabama, Ole Miss, Missouri, and Vanderbilt each falling behind Oklahoma.
“I’ll take Oklahoma at number nine,” Pate said. “Oklahoma’s a playoff program to me, meaning not that they’ll make it every year, but they feel kind of like they’re hanging out in that club of the ones you would consistently project to be playoff caliber programs, meaning any given year they’re going to spit out a playoff caliber team. (John) Mateer’s back. They’re more experienced. They’ve got to address the run game, them and Alabama both. It’s kind of convenient for each one of them. They met each other in the playoffs last year. Someone had to win. It was Alabama, but I put Oklahoma at nine. I don’t have a problem with that.”
The Sooners enter Year 5 under head coach Brent Venables with high expectations, after making it to the College Football Playoff a season ago. With Venables calling the plays on defense and serving as the de-facto defensive coordinator, that side of the ball was elite for Oklahoma a year ago. Offensive coordinator/quarterbacks coach Ben Arbuckle returns to call the plays on offense, and he’ll also get starting quarterback John Mateer back for a second and final year.
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If OU can keep flying high defensively and take another step forward offensively, it’ll be really hard to keep the Sooners out of the CFP. It’s always a dogfight in the SEC, as there are so many good teams, but Oklahoma believes they’ve positioned themselves well to, as Pate put it, spit out a playoff-caliber team year in and year out.
While winning national championships is the standard for OU Football, becoming a yearly CFP-caliber outfit is a good start, as Venables continues to build upon the culture of doing things the right way that he’s instilled in Norman.
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This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: Where is Oklahoma at in 2026 Way-Too-Early Top 25 from Josh Pate?
