The 2026 college football season is almost here. In less than two weeks, a handful of games will kick things off on August 29th for Week 0. Then, the season will be back in full force on Labor Day weekend, with Week 1 games running Thursday through Monday to start September.
The Oklahoma Sooners will kick off the season at home on Friday, September 4th against the UTEP Miners in Week 1. Fall camp is in full swing in Norman, and soon the offseason will be a thing of the past once again.
For now, though, there are still a few more days of waiting before the games return. In the meantime, ESPN writer David Hale decided to rank all 138 teams that will play at the FBS level for the 2026 season into 20 tiers ahead of the new season.
OU was ranked in
Tier 3, a grouping Hale labeled "Maybe this is their year". A handful of teams joined the Sooners in Tier 3, including BYU, LSU, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and USC.
Oklahoma's defense stuffed 31.5% of opponent-designed runs at or behind the line of scrimmage last year. Its 63 tackles for loss led the country. Brent Venables' defense has finished top 12 in the country in TFLs 11 times since 2013 and never finished worse than 23rd. - David Hale, ESPN.
Only seven total teams were ranked inside Hale's top two tiers, including just two SEC teams. The Sooners were ranked 10th in the preseason AP Top 25 Poll (fifth-highest in the SEC). Oklahoma came in at 9th in the US LBM Coaches Poll Top 25 (fourth-highest in the SEC). However, in the SEC Media Day preseason poll, OU ranked 7th in the league, meaning the national media and the coaches are currently higher on the Sooners than the conference media is ahead of 2026.
However, all of these rankings are just a starting point, as the games are what actually matter. Each day we get a little bit closer to finding out what Oklahoma, and every other team, will actually look like on the field in 2026.
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This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: Which tier does ESPN think the Oklahoma Sooners belong in for 2026?
