OU lands at No. 8 in final College Football Playoff Rankings, will host Alabama in first round

It turns out that Oklahoma isn’t quite done playing at Owen Field.

The Sooners held firm at No. 8 in the final College Football Playoff Rankings, which were unveiled Sunday morning. With the eight-seed, the Sooners will host No. 9-seed Alabama in Norman.

It’ll be a rematch between the two teams. The Sooners beat the Crimson Tide in Tuscaloosa, 23-21, in November last month.

The game will be at 7 p.m. Friday, Dec. 19 on ABC.

While the Sooners were comfortably in the playoff field at No. 8 heading into the weekend, the hopes of hosting a first-round playoff game were certainly up in the air. Fortunately for them, things broke their way. Texas Tech beat BYU in the Big 12 Championship, which prevented the Cougars from jumping into the top eight.

Most importantly, Georgia beat Alabama in the SEC Championship game, 28-7. The win prevented the Crimson Tide from leaping the Sooners in the rankings.

However, the Crimson Tide did not drop in the standings. They remained at No. 9, leaving the Sooners and the Crimson Tide locked in for the 8-9 matchup in Norman. The Crimson Tide remained at No. 9 in favor of Notre Dame, who completely missed the playoff despite entering the weekend at No. 10.

With the Sooners securing a top-eight seed, they’ve completed an impressive turnaround from last season. They finished 2024 with a 6-7 record, including 2-6 in SEC play, and they landed at No. 10 in the SEC preseason poll coming into the season.

Things were murky for the Sooners after a home loss to Ole Miss in late October, which dropped them to 6-2 and 3-2 in SEC play. But the Sooners went undefeated in the month of November, including back-to-back wins at Tennessee and Alabama to finish the year at 10-2 (6-2 SEC). They’re the highest-ranked two-loss team in the field.

Now, the Sooners will get a chance to continue competing for a national championship against a fellow SEC team that they beat on the road earlier this season.

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