Oklahoma State has hopes to make its first College Football Playoff, but that could take a hit before Big 12 play begins.

The Cowboys’ season opener is just over a month away and they enter as a dark-horse contender for the College Football Playoff. Ranking third in the Big 12’s preseason poll, OSU is also a fierce contender to take the Big 12.

Of course, if the Cowboys can take care of business in the conference, they will earn an automatic bid to the College Football Playoff, so long as they are one of the five highest-rated conference champs. With only four power conferences, the Big 12 champion is almost a lock to make the playoff and earn a first-round bye as a top-four seed.

As one of 16 teams in the conference, winning the Big 12 is much easier said than done. Even if the Cowboys can make it to Arlington, they know better than most that there are no guarantees, having lost two of the past three title games.

READ MORE: OSU Football: Analyzing 2024 Big 12 Football Championship Odds

If OSU has a strong conference season but can’t take the Big 12, it must rely on an at-large bid. To get an at-large bid, the Cowboys will need a strong nonconference performance.

OSU’s nonconference slate this season leaves no room for error if the team needs to compete for an at-large bid. OSU opens the season against arguably the toughest opponent in the FCS, South Dakota State.

If the Cowboys can get past the Jackrabbits, they will host one of the SEC’s worst teams when Arkansas visits Stillwater. While losses in either of those games are possible, it would derail the Cowboys’ Playoff hopes early. If OSU somehow gets upset by Tulsa, it would be a South Alabama and Central Michigan level of disaster.

With matchups against Oregon and Alabama in future nonconference schedules, OSU leaves room for the quality losses discussion. However, with no opportunity for a quality win in the nonconference this season, any hiccups in the Big 12 could hurt one of the most talented teams in the Mike Gundy era.

READ MORE: OSU Football: Weak Schedule Could Hurt Big 12 Title Chances

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Oklahoma opens preseason training camp next week, and the Sooners have some questions to get answered during the month of August.

In this series, Sooners on SI will attempt to provide some answers ahead of camp.

Up next is the Oklahoma wide receiver corps. 

Following his huge performance in Oklahoma’s spring game, the answer is likely yes, but the talented transfer will have to prove it on the field this fall.

After three seasons at Purdue, speedy wide receiver Deion Burks elected to enter the transfer portal rather than test the NFL Draft. 

The Sooners were able to land Burks out of the portal shortly after the window opened in December, capping off what was already an impressive group of pass catchers. While the Inkster, MI, product is expected to take over as OU’s leading receiver, Burks has never served as a true No. 1 option in a high-powered offense.

As a redshirt sophomore in 2023, Burks was Purdue’s leading receiver with 629 yards and seven touchdowns, but the Boilermakers went 4-8 and were outside of the top 85 teams in the country in points per game.

Now in Norman, Burks has to show that he is able to handle enough volume as a pass catcher to serve as the primary option for an SEC team with big expectations.

After tallying five catches for 174 yards and two touchdowns in the Sooners’ spring game, it seems that Burks has already developed a good connection with starting quarterback Jackson Arnold and is well ingrained in Seth Littrell’s offense.

SEC media seems to have high hopes for Burks this year as well, with the speedster earning Third Team preseason All-SEC honors.

Read More Oklahoma Training Camp Questions

As the saying goes, “the cream will rise to the top.”

In addition to bringing in Burks, Emmett Jones returns Nic Anderson, who racked up 798 yards and 10 touchdowns as a redshirt freshman last year and could become one of the best pass catchers in the nation with good speed at 6-4 and 219 pounds.

Jalil Farooq is also back in Norman for his fourth season with the Sooners.

Even after the addition of Burks, Farooq is the most experienced player in the team’s receiving corps with 23 career starts. Last season, the Lanham, MD, product hauled in 45 passes for 694 yards and two touchdowns.

Farooq missed the spring game with a broken foot and is still recovering but should be back in time for the Sooners’ opener against Temple, according to Brent Venables.

Jayden Gibson and Brenen Thompson will also factor into Jones’ receiver rotation after stepping onto the scene in a major way last year.

Gibson tallied 375 yards and five touchdowns on just 14 receptions in 2023, repeatedly coming up with highlight-reel plays. With impressive speed and the ability to pluck the ball out of the air at 6-5 and 197 pounds, Gibson has the potential to develop into a lethal option alongside some of the aforementioned players.

Thompson played sparingly last season due to injury, but continuously made big plays during his time on the field. The Spearman, TX, product caught seven passes for 241 yards and two touchdowns in 2023 and could see an increase in both categories this year.

With 10.19 speed in the 100-meter dash, Thompson could have had even better stats last season, but outran Dillon Gabriel’s range and had to slow down or come back to the ball on deep routes multiple times.

Additionally, the Sooners should get Andrel Anthony back from injury at some point in the 2024 season. Prior to an ACL tear that ended the Michigan transfer’s season in 2023, Anthony was OU’s leading receiver with 429 yards and a touchdown.

Between Burks, Anderson, Farooq, Gibson, Thompson and Anthony, Jones’ wide receiver group has at least six players who have already proven to be solid options who can challenge opposing defenses.

While this depth is good for Arnold and Oklahoma’s offense, it will be difficult for each of the aforementioned players to get as many targets as they likely deserve. Still, with a strong-armed quarterback and a play caller who is not afraid to be aggressive, the Sooners’ wideouts should get plenty of opportunity to set themselves apart.

With Farooq and Anthony both sidelined due to injuries, there will be an opportunity for one of the Sooners’ young wide receivers to take on a bigger role during training camp.

Jaquaize Pettaway seems to be the most likely candidate outside of the aforementioned six players to secure a spot in Jones’ rotation.

A former 4-star recruit and one of the top 10 wide receivers in the 2023 class, according to 247Sports, Pettaway played sparingly as a true freshman but led the team in receptions Week 1 against Arkansas State.

With blazing speed out of the slot, Pettaway could find his way onto the field early in the season.

True freshmen and former 4-star prospects Zion Kearney and Ivan Carreon also have a chance to emerge after coming to Norman in January as early enrollees.

Grace Evans lived through one of the most powerful and deadly twisters in Oklahoma history: a roaring top-of-the-scale terror in 2013 that plowed through homes, tore through a school and killed 24 people in the small suburb of Moore.

A hospital and bowling alley were also destroyed. But not the movie theater next door — where almost a decade later, Evans and her teenage daughter this week felt no pause buying two tickets to a showing of the blockbuster “Twisters.”

“I was looking for that element of excitement and I guess drama and danger,” Evans said.

Her daughter also walked out a fan. “It was very realistic. I was definitely frightened,” said Charis Evans, 15.

The smash success of “Twisters” has whipped up moviegoers in Oklahoma who are embracing the summer hit, including in towns scarred by deadly real-life tornadoes. Even long before it hit theaters, Oklahoma officials had rolled out the red carpet for makers of the film, authorizing what is likely to wind up being millions of dollars in incentives to film in the state.

In its opening weekend, the action-packed film starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Glen Powell generated $80.5 million from more than 4,150 theaters in North America. Some of the largest audiences have been in the tornado-prone Midwest.

The top-performing theater in the country on opening weekend was the Regal Warren in Moore, which screened the film in 10 of its 17 auditoriums on opening weekend from 9 a.m. to midnight. John Stephens, the theater’s general manager, said many moviegoers mentioned wanting to see the film in a theater that survived a massive tornado.

“The people who live in Tornado Alley have a certain defiance towards mother nature,” he said, “almost like a passion to fight storms, which was depicted by the characters in ‘Twisters.’”

Lee Isaac Chung, who directed the film, considered placing the movie in Oklahoma to be critically important.

“I told everyone this is something that we have to do. We can’t just have blue screens,” Chung told the AP earlier this year. “We’ve got to be out there on the roads with our pickup trucks and in the green environments where this story actually takes place.”

The film was shot at locations across Oklahoma, with the studio taking advantage of a rebate incentive in which the state directly reimburses production companies for up to 30% of qualifying expenditures, including labor.

State officials said the exact amount of money Oklahoma spent on “Twisters” is still being calculated. But the film is exactly the kind of blockbuster Sooner State policymakers envisioned when they increased the amount available for the program in 2021 from $8 million annually to $30 million, said Jeanette Stanton, director of Oklahoma’s Film and Music Office.

Among the major films and television series that took advantage of Oklahoma’s film incentives in recent years were “Reagan” ($6.1 million), “Killers of the Flower Moon” ($12.4 million), and the television shows “Reservoir Dogs” ($13 million) and “Tulsa King” ($14.1 million).

Stanton said she’s not surprised by the success of “Twisters,” particularly in Oklahoma.

“You love seeing your state on the big screen, and I think for locals across the state, when they see that El Reno water tower falling down, they think: ‘I know where that is!’” she said.

“It’s almost as if Oklahoma was a character in the film,” she added.

In the northeast Oklahoma community of Barnsdall, where two people were killed and more than 80 homes were destroyed by a tornado in May, Mayor Johnny Kelley said he expects most residents will embrace the film.

“Some will and some won’t. Things affect people differently, you know?” said Kelley, who is a firefighter in nearby Bartlesville. “I really don’t ever go to the movies or watch TV, but I might go see that one.”

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Follow Sean Murphy at www.x.com/apseanmurphy