The Oklahoma Sooners entered the 2026 season hoping to return to the College Football Playoff and improve on last year's result. Instead, OU has four losses entering November, and those expectations are down the drain with four weeks left in the regular season and five weeks left before the CFP bracket is released.
Now, head coach Brent Venables and the Sooners will have to split their final four games just to make a bowl game. The last time OU missed a bowl was in 1998, the final season of the John Blake era. Bob Stoops was hired to replace him, and Oklahoma has made it to bowl season for 27 straight years. That streak is in serious jeopardy this season.
In the SEC, the teams that qualify for the CFP are off the board for the remaining bowl selections.
The Citrus Bowl picks the top SEC team that doesn't qualify for the playoff.
After that, there's a pool of six bowls, with no pecking order, that will consult with the SEC and school personnel to determine where teams are scheduled. They'll try to create the best possible matchups. For 2026, those bowls (in no particular order) are the Gator Bowl, the Las Vegas Bowl, the Liberty Bowl, the Music City Bowl, the ReliaQuest Bowl, and the Texas Bowl.
After that, two more bowls, the Birmingham Bowl and the Gasparilla Bowl, will pick from any bowl-eligible SEC teams that still don't have a landing spot.
In his latest bowl projections, USA TODAY Sports' Erick Smith has the Sooners headed to the Las Vegas Bowl, which will be played on December 31st. The SEC and the Big Ten alternate which league sends a team to the Las Vegas Bowl each season, with the SEC getting even years and the Big Ten getting odd years. The other game that follows that pattern is the Duke's Mayo Bowl, with the SEC headed there in odd years and the Big Ten headed there in even years.
OU's projected opponent in that game is the Washington Huskies, and they're fulfilling the legacy Pac-12 bid for the bowl, despite now playing in the Big Ten. The 10 former Pac-12 teams are still eligible for Pac-12-affiliated bowl games, as are the teams that are currently in the Pac-12.
Oklahoma and Washington have met three times on the gridiron. The first came in the 1985 Orange Bowl, which came at the end of the 1984 season. The Huskies won that game 28-17 on New Year's Day, denying the Sooners at least a piece of the national title. Instead, BYU won it all that season. However, Oklahoma won the national championship the following season, their third under Barry Switzer.
The other two matchups were OU wins. The Sooners won 37-20 in Norman in 2006, and dominated in a 55-14 win in Seattle in 2008.
Oklahoma has a fight on its hands if it wants to make a 28th-straight appearance in a postseason game. At the start of the season, a trip to the Las Vegas Bowl would've been a disappointment. Now, it'd mean that OU went at least .500 in the month of November to keep the bowl streak alive.
Post-Week 9 OU Bowl Projection Roundup
- USA TODAY Sports' Erick Smith: Las Vegas Bowl vs. Washington
- ESPN's Kyle Bonagura: Las Vegas Bowl vs. USC
- ESPN's Mark Schlabach: No bowl
- CBS Sports' Brad Crawford: Music City Bowl vs. Nebraska
- Sports Illustrated's Bryan Fischer: Gasparilla Bowl vs. Florida State
- Athlon Sports' Steve Lassan: Liberty Bowl vs. West Virginia
- The Athletic's Scott Dochterman: Liberty Bowl vs. Kansas State
- College Football News' Pete Fiutak: First Responder Bowl vs. North Texas
Contact/Follow us @SoonersWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Oklahoma news, notes and opinions. You can also follow Aaron on X@Aaron_Gelvin.
This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: Where does OU land in new bowl projections from USA TODAY Sports?
