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SEC Schedule Reveal: Oklahoma's 2024 League Opponents Look Daunting

Bigger attendance, tougher defenses, daunting road trips and a rugged home slate all highlight the Sooners' 2024 schedule.

John E. Hoover

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In two weeks, Oklahoma and Texas will be one academic year away from joining the Southeastern Conference.

That happens on July 1, 2024. But the festivities and formalities officially began on Wednesday — and for OU football fans, the future has arrived.

The SEC announced its 2024 conference opponents Wednesday night during a reveal show on the SEC Network, and the Sooners’ schedule is expectedly daunting.

Playing an eight-game SEC schedule in ’24, OU will host perennial contender Alabama among its four league home games along with South Carolina, and Tennessee, while Texas will be played in Dallas.

The road schedule doesn’t look much easier. The Sooners’ road games are at Auburn, LSU, Ole Miss and Missouri. 

The Sooners and Tigers shared conference membership for some 90 years, with OU holding a 67-24-5 all-time edge.

The Vols are coached by former Sooner QB Josh Heupel, the last OU quarterback to lead the Sooners to a  national championship and a long-time OU assistant coach. 

The Gamecocks' coach is former Lincoln Riley assistant Shane Beamer, who has breathed new life into the program.

Meanwhile, OU has a decorated bowl history with Alabama, Auburn, LSU and Ole Miss.

Wednesday’s reveal only consists home and away opponents for the 2024 season. Actual dates for those games will be announced later.

2024 Oklahoma schedule
2024 Oklahoma schedule / via SEC Network

With only eight league games, Oklahoma still needs to find two non-conference opponents for 2024. Currently, only Temple (Aug. 31) and Tulane (Sept. 14) are under contract. The SEC mandates that all members must play at least one Power 5 opponent.

Earlier Wednesday, following an OU Board of Regents meeting in Tulsa, OU athletic director Joe Castiglione said he “totally get(s) the reasons why we voted to have an eight-game scheduled for one year,” and said that may be just for one year but could continue. He said he believes the SEC will “eventually … have a nine-game schedule.”

The 2024 schedule allows each of the 14 existing SEC members to play either Oklahoma or Texas.

The Longhorns' SEC schedule consists of road games at Arkansas, Texas AUM and Vanderbilt (plus OU in Dallas) and home games with Florida, Kentucky, Mississippi State and two-time defending national champion Georgia.

Castiglione said OU was not consulted by the SEC schedule makers about any preferences about its 2024 opponents, its permanent rivals or where they want any games to be played.

“Only as it relates to the University of Texas,” Castiglione said, “you know, that traditional rival. And my counterpart, Chris Del Conte, and I have talked about all of that before, since just trying to figure out what the scheduling format was going to be. And they talked to us about understanding that better, you know, where the game needs to be played and how that would fit into the ultimate schedule that they develop. But in terms of you know, terms of any special interests, not at all.”

Castiglione said the SEC has been “very mindful of those traditional rivalries” among its current members as well as its 2024 newcomers when deciding on a 8-game conference schedule for next year over a 9-game schedule.

“Those kinds of conversations, yes, we've been involved,” he said, “but not not any particular special interests of the university other than, you know, our view and (to) protect potential secondary rivals that might be developed.

But in the end, that's all going to be identified through a very comprehensive scheduling process that the SEC has developed.”

The SEC last year led the nation in home-game attendance for the 24th year in a row. The league averaged 76,667 per game in 2022, which was just off its all-time record set in 2015.

The three programs with the largest average attendance in the nation last year were from the Big Ten — Michigan, Penn State and Ohio State averaged 110,000, 107,000 and 105,000 — but the next 10 were either in the SEC, are headed to the SEC, or play in Nebraska.

Castiglione said he’s not worried about OU fans (average attendance 83,835) being overwhelmed at LSU (100,596) or Tennessee (100,532) or anywhere else.

“Our fans are really crafty and creative in finding tickets,” Castiglione said. “I know they are because we go to the these places and we can hear ‘em. You think you may only have 5,000 there and then there's 25,000. I look around, ‘How do they get tickets?’ But they do.”

Likewise, Castiglione doesn’t expect OU fans to be intimidated when SEC Nation pours into Norman.

“There's a crazy way that Oklahoma fans just make people feel so welcome and accommodate,” he said. “You walk around tailgates or wherever, they they're always open to welcoming visiting fans. And we get constant positive feedback from that.”

OU and Alabama have met twice in bowl games since, but their last regular-season meetings came in 2002 and 2003, when the Sooners swept the first game in Norman and the second game in Tuscaloosa. OU leads the all-time series 3-2-1.

The Sooners are 15-10-2 all-time against 11 SEC opponents (not including when those teams were in other conferences such as Missouri or Texas A&M). The only schools the Sooners have a losing record against as SEC opponents are LSU (1-2), Texas A&M (0-1), Georgia (0-1) and Ole Miss (0-1) — all of whom beat OU in bowl games since 1999. Playing against SEC members, Oklahoma is 1-0 against Arkansas, 1-1 against Florida, 2-1 against Kentucky, 3-1 against Tennessee and 2-0-1 against Vanderbilt.

Oklahoma owns a 76-30-1 (.715) combined record against its seven 2024 SEC foes that are currently in the conference. OU has never faced South Carolina.

Per the SEC, 2024 opponents were determined based on two primary factors: traditional opponents and balance of schedule strength.

Balance of schedule strength was based on each school’s conference winning percentage since the last expansion of the SEC in 2012. The winning percentages of Oklahoma and Texas in the Big 12 since 2012 were included in determining 16 positions ranked by winning percentage.

Each school’s 2024 SEC schedule will include four opponents — two home and two away — whose winning percentage ranked among the top eight conference winning percentages since 2012. Also, each school’s 2024 schedule will include four opponents — two home and two away — whose winning percentages ranked among the second eight conference winning percentages since 2012.

The SEC noted on Wednesday that while no school will travel in 2024 to the same location it traveled in 2023, when a long-term schedule format is determined, it may not be possible to structure a schedule that does not include some schools playing at the same location in back-to-back years in the first year of a new format.

It was also previously announced the SEC will eliminate divisions beginning in 2024. The SEC Championship Game will feature the two top teams in the conference standings at the end of the regular season.

OU Media Relations contributed to this report.

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John E. Hoover
JOHN E. HOOVER

John is an award-winning journalist whose work spans five decades in Oklahoma, with multiple state, regional and national awards as a sportswriter at various newspapers. During his newspaper career, John covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Kansas City Chiefs, the Oklahoma Sooners, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, the Arkansas Razorbacks and much more. In 2016, John changed careers, migrating into radio and launching a YouTube channel, and has built a successful independent media company, DanCam Media. From there, John has written under the banners of Sporting News, Sports Illustrated, Fan Nation and a handful of local and national magazines while hosting daily sports talk radio shows in Oklahoma City, Tulsa and statewide. John has also spoken on Capitol Hill in Oklahoma City in a successful effort to put more certified athletic trainers in Oklahoma public high schools. Among the dozens of awards he has won, John most cherishes his national "Beat Writer of the Year" from the Associated Press Sports Editors, Oklahoma's "Best Sports Column" from the Society of Professional Journalists, and Two "Excellence in Sports Medicine Reporting" Awards from the National Athletic Trainers Association. John holds a bachelor's degree in Mass Communications from East Central University in Ada, OK. Born and raised in North Pole, Alaska, John played football and wrote for the school paper at Ada High School in Ada, OK. He enjoys books, movies and travel, and lives in Broken Arrow, OK, with his wife and two kids.

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