Football schedule finalized

By John Shinn

Oklahoma solidified this coming season’s schedule and added another heavyweight home-and-home series for the future.

OU athletic director Joe Castiglione announced the addition of Tennessee-Chattanooga to the 2008 schedule Tuesday, locking the Sooners into their 12-team schedule.

There was also the announcement the Sooners will face Ohio State at Owen Field in 2016 and at the Ohio State in 2017.

For the near future, Tennessee-Chattanooga, which will serve as next season’s opener, will be Aug. 30 at Owen Field.

Unfortunately for the Sooners, facing a team like the Mocs will hurt their strength of schedule. Tennessee-Chattanooga is a football championship subdivision member (formerly Division I-AA). Every team OU has played since Arkansas State on Sept. 9, 2000, has been a bowl subdivision team.

“For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the addition of the 12th game, scheduling is more difficult now than it has been at any other time during my career,” Castiglione said. “We would have preferred to have had the schedule finalized earlier, but the process is challenging. For this year and next, we have been in a position of filling dates that were previously filled by other institutions, who later moved their schedules in other directions.”

The rest of OU’s non-conference schedule will be challenging.

Cincinnati, which went 10-3 this past season, visits Owen Field Sept. 6. OU goes to Washington Sept. 13 and TCU comes calling Sept. 27.

The Big 12 Conference portion begins Oct. 4 at Baylor and the annual Cotton Bowl showdown with Texas is slated for Oct. 11. The Sooners wrap the month with Kansas visiting Owen Field Oct. 18 before traveling to Kansas State Oct. 25.

The final month of the season begins and ends with two of OU’s fiercest rivals.

Nebraska comes to Owen Field for the first time since 2004 on Nov. 1. The Sooners head to Kyle Field to meet Texas A&M Nov. 8. The home portion of the schedule concludes Nov. 15, when Texas Tech visits. The regular-season finale is Nov. 29 at Oklahoma State.

If OU is able to reach the Big 12 championship game for the seventh time in nine seasons, it will be played Dec. 6 at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Mo.

“We feel we have the kind of schedule strength that will serve our program well,” Castiglione said.

Of the 11 bowl subdivision teams on the schedule, seven played in bowls this past season, with seven posting winning records and three winning at least 10 games.

The only thing the schedule is missing is a matchup against a traditional power. The announcement of the series against Ohio State is that kind of game.

It will be the first regular-season meeting between the two powerhouse programs since 1983. They’ve met twice before. The Sooners won the first, 29-28, at Ohio Stadium in 1977. In 1983, the Buckeyes visited Owen Field and left with a 24-14 victory.

“This series will bring together two of the most celebrated programs in the history of college football,” Castiglione said. “Oklahoma has demonstrated that it is committed to scheduling games of this kind that mean so much to college football on a national scale. We hope to continue that approach well into our future.”

Future schedules also include home-and-home series with Florida State, Tennessee, Notre Dame and LSU. The Sooners will visit Miami in 2009.

John Shinn

366-3536

jshinn@normantranscript.com