Jim Nagy defends OU's College Football Playoff status: 'Show me a better resume'

The Oklahoma Sooners capped off their season with a tight win over LSU. With that, the Sooners moved to 10-2 on the season and appear to be well-positioned to make it to the College Football Playoff as an at-large bid.

Despite that, not everyone is all in on Oklahoma to the Playoff. That, notably, included Tom Fornelli of CBS Sports. He wrote on Twitter/X that “This country needs to have a serious discussion about letting Oklahoma into the playoff.”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Oklahoma didn’t care for his comment. In particular, Sooners general manager Jim Nagy. He would quote Fornelli’s initial post with a passionate response. In it, he demanded to see a better resume around the country.

“‘Letting’ Oklahoma into the playoff,” Jim Nagy wrote. “Show me a better resume. GTFOH.”

Fornelli seemed to take note of the reply. Indirectly, he would quote his own initial post, writing, “Oklahoma fans and staffers are taking this a little too seriously.” He would also add that he wasn’t joking in his initial post and that he has concerns about the Sooners in the Playoff.

The concerns about Oklahoma, in a season where there are numerous potential at-large teams sitting between 9-3 and 11-1 that seem worthy, is that the Sooners have been winning ugly. In other words, despite having an elite defense, Oklahoma doesn’t pass the eye test. That’s been the case for several weeks as the offense struggles to consistently move the ball. In fact, Oklahoma has only scored more than 30 points four times this season and once against a Power Four opponent.

At the same time, which Nagy would argue, Oklahoma has won those games even if they were ugly wins. That amounts to a strong resume on paper. Oklahoma is 5-1 against teams that were ranked in the Top 25, be it the AP Poll or College Football Playoff rankings, at the time that they played. However, in the CFP rankings going into the final week of the season, Auburn and Missouri were no longer ranked. Michigan and Tennessee suffered losses in the final week of the season as well. So, it will be interesting how many ranked wins they end with. They also suffered two losses, both to teams currently ranked, though Texas was unranked at the time.

There is another College Football Playoff selection committee rankings that will come out on Tuesday. With Oklahoma finished in the regular season, they won’t be able to add to their resume at all again. So, those rankings should offer a good idea what the selection committee thinks of Oklahoma. Of course, depending on conference championship week, there could still be movement and even at-large bids that get stolen.