College football is not a fair sport compared to most professional sports leagues. Since there are so many teams of highly varying qualities, teams do not have anywhere close to the same strengths of schedule. Even teams in the same conference will often have very different strengths of schedule.
On Friday, CFB analyst Josh Pate discussed the SEC team with the toughest schedule next season.
Josh Pate Names the Oklahoma Sooners As the SEC Team With the Toughest Schedule in 2025
Pate released an episode of ‘Josh Pate’s College Football Show’ in which he talked about strength of schedule and how it can determine how a season can go.
He looked at the Oklahoma Sooners’ schedule for next season and said that no other team in the SEC has a schedule tougher than theirs.
“Oklahoma, I think, may have the toughest schedule,” he said. “They have nine games against tier one or tier two opponents, as we would define them. That’s the most in college football. No one, to me, has a tougher schedule than Oklahoma in college football. They have Michigan out of conference; they play this stretch where they have Texas and South Carolina and Ole Miss and Tennessee and ‘Bama.”
Regarding the back end of their schedule, Pate said, “Only one of those games is in Norman, and even if they were all there, they’d still be tough. They end the season, there’s just… look how they end the season. There’s Texas in Dallas, at South Carolina, Ole Miss, at Tennessee, at Alabama, Missouri, LSU. It’s just body blow after body blow after body blow.”
The Sooners had a down season by their standards in 2024. They transferred to the SEC from the Big 12 and only finished the season with six wins. This was a significant step back from the previous season when they had 10 wins.
It shows how much a difference in the quality of a team’s schedule can impact their season. The Big 12 is a Power Five conference, but it is on the weaker end of that group. As a result, teams in the Big 12 typically have easier schedules than teams in the SEC. Conversely, the SEC is viewed as either the best conference in college football or the second-best behind the Big Ten.
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So, entering the SEC resulted in the Sooners having a down season. Heading into 2025, they are in a position to have an even tougher schedule, even by SEC standards.
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