Oklahoma Sooners Eye Tough Big 12 Schedule in 2012
The Big 12 football schedule was finally released Tuesday, and the Oklahoma Sooners are getting no breaks in the new-look Big 12 conference.
The Sooners’ 2012 conference schedule is highlighted by a difficult three game stretch to close the season. The Sooners will travel to West Virginia, face Oklahoma State at home, and travel to TCU in three consecutive weeks to end the season.
Oklahoma will be hosting Bedlam in Norman for the first time since 2009. The Sooners have played the past two years in Stillwater due to scheduling difficulties as the conference has shifted from 12 to 10 teams.
The rest of the conference schedule includes home dates with Kansas State, Kansas, and Baylor, and road trips to Iowa State and Texas Tech, in addition to the usual neutral site game with Texas at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas.
The Red River Rivalry will take place on Oct. 13, which, coincidentally, is the same weekend as Austin City Limits, a popular music festival in Austin, Texas. The schedule conflict will no doubt affect fans of both schools, as plenty of Oklahoma students and general residents travel south for the music, but it won’t affect the game’s attendance in any fashion.
The possible difficulties with the Sooners’ schedule deal with the lack of a bye week late in the season. At this point, the Sooners will have their two bye weeks in the month of September, with their last one being Sept. 29. That will make for a long conference schedule, especially with the grueling closing stretch the Sooners have drawn.
The Sooners and Kansas both are scheduled for a bye week on Sept. 29, so the possibility of moving their Oct. 20 matchup to that date is there. Whether or not it will happen is another question.
In non-conference play, the only game that is set in stone for OU is their marquee matchup with Notre Dame in Norman on Oct. 27. However, it appears the last two games on the Sooners’ schedule are close to being nailed down.
Nothing has been confirmed, but there have been rumors that the Sooners will open the season Sept. 1 in El Paso against the UTEP Miners. CBSSports.com’s Dennis Dodds shared the rumor on Twitter last Friday. OU administrators have done nothing to deny the possibility, so it seems as if that will be how the season will start for the Sooners. Not exactly what Sooner fans expected, but beggars can’t be choosers.
The other non-conference slot appears to have been filled with FCS opponent Florida A&M. The Orlando Sentinel’s Coley Harvey tweeted today the two schools had agreed to play in Norman on Sept. 8. Florida State had also been trying to schedule the Rattlers for their 2012 schedule.
So at this point, the Sooners’ schedule looks something like this:
Sept 1- @ UTEP
Sept 8- vs. Florida A&M
Sept 15- bye
Sept 22- vs. Kansas State
Sept 29- bye
Oct. 6- @ Texas Tech
Oct. 13- vs. Texas (Dallas)
Oct. 20- vs. Kansas
Oct. 27- vs. Notre Dame
November 3- @ Iowa State
November 10- vs. Baylor
November 17- @ West Virginia
November 24- vs. Oklahoma State
December 1- @ TCU
The Sooners shouldn’t have much trouble with the first three quarters of the season, but the last three games of the season could make the Sooners national title contenders or middle of the pack finishers in the Big 12.
After the disappointing 2011 season, Oklahoma will be hoping it will make them title contenders.
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The sooners won’t have trouble with anyone this year after the.dissappointment from last year they will have a huge chip on their shoulders and take.it out on everyone else landry wins the heisman and the sooners the natl championship..Boomer sooner
OU always plays the toughest or nearly the toughest out of conference schedule in college football each year. When Tulsa is usually your biggest ‘cupcake’ game, you play a tough schedule!
That said, this is brutal with both bye’s coming when they least need them!