What does Oklahoma need to do to win the national championship?

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Being a part of the football program at the University of Oklahoma means that you've been entrusted to uphold the incredibly high standard of winning that is always present at one of college football's blue-blood institutions. OU has won seven national championships over its 131 seasons, with more historic coaches and iconic players than can be counted.

Following the footsteps of Bennie Owen, Bud Wilkinson, Barry Switzer, and Bob Stoops is Oklahoma's current head coach, Brent Venables. A former assistant under Stoops, he knows what success at OU looks like, and he's trying to put his own stamp on the program.

The standard at Oklahoma is winning. It's not just about winning games, having a good record, exceeding expectations, making a bowl game, or competing for a conference title. The standard at Oklahoma is about winning championships, specifically national championships.

The Sooners haven't won it all since 2000, though they've been close a number of times since then. However, that drought is far too long for Sooner Nation, and it's time for the program to add an eighth championship to the trophy case in the years to come.

So, what does Oklahoma have to do to be able to win a national championship in the near future? To answer that question, we'll take a look at the champions of the first 12 seasons of the College Football Playoff era (2014-2025) to see what they had in common. We'll compare that to Oklahoma to see what the Sooners have lacked in that same timeframe.

Of course, there are always multiple teams within a single season that meet the criteria for a champion, and part of what makes college football so special is that it is ultimately decided on the field. Though OU could fit the bill and still come up short, the Sooners very likely can't win a title unless they play like other champions of the CFP era.

Blue-chip ratio

Many point to blue-chip ratio as one of the hallmarks of determining if a team can go all the way. However, the 2025 season saw Indiana, with an 8% BCR, win the title, debunking the notion that you can't win a title unless you have a roster with a makeup of more than 50% of the players being four-and-five star prospects. Oklahoma has also regularly fallen inside the BCR, but hasn't won it all in over a quarter-century. This year's blue-chip ratio is 48%, according to Punt and Rally.

Blue-chip ratio isn't the be-all, end-all, but it's hard to ignore the trends. Can Oklahoma repeat what the Hoosiers did last year?

Complimentary Football

That brings us to another element, one that is decided on the field. That would be complementary football, something that has typically eluded OU since the late 2000s. All but one of the 12 champions of the playoff era had one of the following: An offense and defense that both ranked in the top 15 nationally in points per game, or one unit that ranked in the top five, while the other unit was still in the top 30. The only exception is LSU in 2019. The Tigers had the 32nd-ranked defense, but the top-ranked offense in a historically prolific title season.

  • 2014 Ohio State – Offense: 5th (44.8 ppg), Defense: 26th (22.0 ppg)
  • 2015 Alabama – Offense: 30th (35.1 ppg), Defense: 3rd (15.1 ppg)
  • 2016 Clemson – Offense: 14th (39.2 ppg), Defense: 10th (18.0 ppg)
  • 2017 Alabama – Offense: 15th (37.1 ppg), Defense: 1st (11.9 ppg)
  • 2018 Clemson – Offense: 4th (44.3 ppg), Defense: 1st (13.1 ppg)
  • 2019 LSU – Offense: 1st (48.4 ppg), Defense: 32nd (21.9 ppg)
  • 2020 Alabama – Offense: 2nd (48.5 ppg), Defense: 13th (19.4 ppg)
  • 2021 Georgia – Offense: 9th (38.6 ppg), Defense: 1st (10.2 ppg)
  • 2022 Georgia – Offense: 5th (41.1 ppg), Defense: 5th (14.3 ppg)
  • 2023 Michigan – Offense: 14th (35.9 ppg), Defense: 1st (10.4 ppg)
  • 2024 Ohio State – Offense: 14th (35.7 ppg), Defense: 1st (12.9 ppg)
  • 2025 Indiana – Offense: 3rd (41.6 ppg), Defense: 2nd (11.7 ppg)

In that same timeframe, the Sooners have accomplished this feat just once, in 2015. The No. 4 offense and the No. 29 defense resided in Norman that year, but Oklahoma lost in the playoff semifinals.

  • 2014 Oklahoma – Offense: 21st (36.4 ppg), Defense: 56th (25.9 ppg)
  • 2015 Oklahoma – Offense: 4th (43.5 ppg), Defense: 29th (22.0 ppg)
  • 2016 Oklahoma – Offense: 3rd (43.9 ppg), Defense: 69th (28.8 ppg)
  • 2017 Oklahoma – Offense: 3rd (45.1 ppg), Defense: 68th (27.1 ppg)
  • 2018 Oklahoma – Offense: 1st (48.4 ppg), Defense: 101st (33.3 ppg)
  • 2019 Oklahoma – Offense: 6th (42.1 ppg), Defense: 64th (27.3 ppg)
  • 2020 Oklahoma – Offense: 6th (43.0 ppg), Defense: 29th (21.7 ppg)
  • 2021 Oklahoma – Offense: 8th (39.1 ppg). Defense: 60th (25.8 ppg)
  • 2022 Oklahoma – Offense: 33rd (32.8 ppg), Defense: 99th (30.0 ppg)
  • 2023 Oklahoma – Offense: 4th (41.7 ppg), Defense: 49th (23.5 ppg)
  • 2024 Oklahoma – Offense: 97th (24.0 ppg), Defense: 29th (21.5 ppg)
  • 2025 Oklahoma – Offense: 79th (26.2 ppg), Defense: 7th (15.5 ppg)

If Oklahoma wants to win it all, the Sooners must have an offense and a defense that complement each other. OU's best bet is probably going the top-15 on offense and defense route, as each of the five champions of the NIL era (2021-2025) have fallen into that category. However, each of those teams had at least one unit that ranked in the top five nationally.

If you prefer raw numbers, each CFP-era champion has averaged at least 35.1 points per game on offense. During that same timeframe, the champs have also given up no more than 22 points per game defensively. During the NIL era, those figures jump to a minimum of 35.7 ppg on offense and allowing a maximum of 14.3 ppg on defense.

Oklahoma hasn't been able to hit those marks in the same season in the NIL era, but did fall into that category in 2015 and 2020. Despite the best defense of the Lincoln Riley era in 2020, the Sooners lost twice early in the year, missing the playoff in the COVID season.

To put it simply, Oklahoma has to be a serious force to be reckoned with on both offense and defense if they want to win the national title, especially in the NIL era. Under Riley, an offensive guru, OU regularly had great offenses, but failed to match that excellence on defense. Under Venables, a defensive mastermind, that equation has flipped. He's righted the ship on defense, but he's really only put one standout offense on the field, which came in 2023 while he was still fixing the defense.

Championship Experience

However, one advantage that the Sooners do have is Venables himself. He's got championship program experience from his time as a defensive coordinator at OU under Stoops (winning the 2000 title) and from his time as the defensive coordinator at Clemson under Dabo Swinney (winning the 2016 and 2018 titles). He's seen two different examples of how to build a program into a championship program, and he's been hard at work trying to do the same in Norman.

Having a head coach with national-title-winning experience as an assistant has served programs like Georgia and Indiana well recently. A number of other title-winning head coaches have worked for title-winning head men over the course of their careers. Venables has certainly seen first-hand what it looks like to be heavily involved in a championship program, meaning he could, in theory, build his own more easily than someone who hasn't seen it from the inside could.

Over the last couple of years, Venables' defense has looked ready for primetime. That's what OU signed up for when they hired one of the best defensive minds of his era. In fact, the 2025 Sooners posted the best defensive numbers since 2009, when Venables was also running the defense. That means that the offense, which has lagged behind for the last two seasons, has to undergo a similar transformation. A one-sided team won't be enough to win it all, but two strong units working together just might have what it takes.

Venables and his Sooners will be the first to tell you that just finding a way, any way, to win your games is the most important element in becoming a champion, and they'd be right. However, the CFP requires you to beat multiple excellent teams in succession to be crowned champion. The way to do that is with well-rounded, complementary football all season long.

Unlike his predecessor, Venables is committed to putting an elite unit on the field on both sides of the ball, not just the side where his expertise comes from. If he's successful in facilitating, say, a top-five defense and a top-15 offense in Norman, Venables will have the Sooners in the same realm nationally as the most recent title-winners of college football, and that will give Oklahoma a chance to hoist the national championship trophy under his watch.

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This article originally appeared on Sooners Wire: What does Oklahoma need to do to win the national championship?

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