There is no denying that Oklahoma football is one of the biggest brands in college football. According to a recent analysis by College Football News, the Sooners is No. 1 all-time in the Associated Press poll era.
With 928 all-time wins, the Sooners are the fifth winningest teams historically, and that record is even better since the Bud Wilkinson era elevated Oklahoma football as a bonafide national power.
If you just consider the time span from 1946 to the present, no team at the FBS level has won more college football games than the 683 won by the Oklahoma Sooners. Seventy-four percent of Oklahoma’s all-time wins in 127 college football seasons have come since 1946, or over 76 seasons.
That same claim also applies to the current century. In the first 22 seasons of the 21st century, the Sooners are the winningest program in college football with 18 10-win seasons and 239 victories total.
Given that record of success, it would stand to reason that the Sooners would be a program with a high percentage of time ranked high among the top 25 teams in college football over the 86 college football seasons since the Associated Press rankings debuted in 1936.
College Football News recently did an analysis examining the final rankings in every AP Top-25 poll conducted since 1936 in order to come up with an all-time AP Top-25 ranking.
Using a formula that assigned 25 points to the team ranked No. 1 in the final poll of every college football season since 1936. The No. 2 team every year received 24 points, No. 3 23 points and so on.
The final results, as you may have surmised by this point, showed Oklahoma as the No. 1 team all-time in the AP poll era with 1,136 points. Alabama, which clearly is the AP top-ranked team of the 2000s, was second to the Sooners with 1,129 total points, followed by Ohio State, Notre Dame and Michigan.
Up until the 2014 season, Oklahoma led all college teams in the number of weeks ranked No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25. Alabama and Ohio State have since passed the Sooners in that category.
And until the 2020 season, Oklahoma was No. 1 in college football for the number of all-time weeks ranked in the top five of the AP rankings. Alabama took over the top spot during the 2020 season for the most weeks ranked in the top five.
In the 22 seasons since 2000, the Sooners have failed to appear in the final Associated Press rankings for the season just twice (2009 and 2014). Over that same time period, OU has finished No. 1 once and in the top five eight times. The Sooners’ average final AP Top 25 ranking over the past 22 seasons is 6.77.
New Oklahoma head coach Brent Venables has a heavy legacy to live up to in his first season at the helm of Sooner football.