Josh Pate is on the scene at SEC Media Days, relaxed at the College Football Hall of Fame in Atlanta, and the vibes are electric. The thing about Pate is that his reckless predictions aren’t so much like throwing darts at the board for clicks or hot-take material. Sure, his pronouncements can sound crazy at times, but he’s got an ability to support them with facts, trends, and keen football acumen. As if last season, he floated a concept that Alabama, being at 9-3, was a playoff contender. He’s also proficient at sensing midseason trouble. Like Missouri upending Alabama, Texas falling at Vandy.
He doesn’t just make announcements, either; he explains, highlighting shaky O-lines, trap-game scheduling, and injury lists. And just like that, once again, Pate is being bold with assumptions, and once again, it’s two teams that are on his list and also in good standing. Oklahoma and Florida. Now, seemingly in his opinion, OU and the Gators would have been in the top 10 had they not been playing their gauntlet SEC schedule and been in the ACC or Big 12. As soon as he dropped that bombshell, Pate went right into the meat of it on the 2025 SEC Media Days podcast.
“My bold take is that OU and Florida are both top 10 caliber teams that I’m not willing to necessarily predict finishing in the top 10 because of the schedule there,” Josh Pate states. “I think really highly of the way Napier has been so diligent. He was dead in the water last year, by the way, and stuck to his guns and has been so diligent in just sticking to his process. I happen to believe in it.” Oklahoma and Florida both received total buzzsaws for 2025. OU is looking at wars with Alabama, LSU, Ole Miss, Tennessee, Missouri, and a non-conference battle with Michigan. In the meantime, Florida’s schedule is loaded with Texas, Georgia, Tennessee, A&M, Ole Miss, Kentucky, Miami, AND Florida State. It’s just one slugfest after another. Breakdowns show both schools with top-two ranked difficulty schedules.
And the SEC as a whole has 11 of the 12 most difficult schedules in the nation this season. Now, get into the coaching aspect, Josh is big on Billy Napier, and it’s not hollow encouragement. Last season, despite the Gators’ struggles and Napier being on the hot seat, the guy never flinched. In 2025, Florida will schedule 10 (!) games against Power Four teams. For OU, Pate isn’t oblivious to last season’s struggles with just two SEC victories and an agonizing bowl loss. But he recognizes betterment and a more seasoned team in 2025, despite the SEC’s “victimizing” schedule makers. And then he can’t stop raving about Brent Venables. “Venables has tried everything,” Josh said in the podcast. “Like, he turned over every rock. Love the fact that in this day and age, you can go get a quarterback and his coordinator, and he’s both come in.”
Nov 12, 2022; Morgantown, West Virginia, USA; Oklahoma Sooners head coach Brent Venables argues a call with an official during the first quarter against the West Virginia Mountaineers at Mountaineer Field at Milan Puskar Stadium. Ben Queen-USA TODAY Sports
He adds, “But I think people outside of Norman are probably a little bit underselling the quality of personnel they have, and they look at last year, and as a record, it was a disaster. I don’t think it was a disaster as a team. I think they had very terminal flaws in specific areas. And if they addressed that, I mean you can look at their schedule and how tough it is, but then if they’ve addressed it, if I happen to be right about either or both of those teams, that also means you’ve got to play them.” After a grueling 2024 season, sure, on paper it was a 6-7 “disaster,” but the reality is more complicated.
He revamped his staff with five new coaches, among them offensive guru Ben Arbuckle and veteran defensive thinkers such as Wes Goodwin and Nate Dreiling. For a school as proud as OU, this was a facelift. And the QB situation? Venables acquired John Mateer, an experienced QB, and basically added the man he feels most comfortable with having call plays. Pate’s right about the outsiders to point at last year’s record and write OU off, but that ignores the context. The Sooners played without a functional offense for much of the year: consistent QB injuries, no wide receiver separation, and the offensive line was green and overmatched against SEC fronts.
It’s hard to play defense when you’re constantly on the field or your offense isn’t moving the ball. And the final flaws? Red-zone performance, offense consistency, and a defense that couldn’t make up for being on the field so much. Venables has pointed to each of those directly: new play-callers on offense and defense, greater depth on the line, and, for 2025, he’s reclaiming defensive play-calling duties himself. So the next time you watch OU or Florida go 9–3 and some analyst describes them as overrated, recall Pate’s opinion.
Why a 9-3 record means playoff gold
“Either one of them could go nine and three, I think they’re in the postseason,” Pate says on the SEC Media Days podcast. That’s a big shift from last year, where SEC teams with 9-3 records got left out. But the context for 2025 is radically different, and Pate made sure to break that down. Last year, with only four playoff spots, teams like Missouri (11-2), Ole Miss (10-2), and LSU (9-3) were left on the outside looking in, despite solid records against tough competition. The committee just didn’t have the room. But now, with a 12-team playoff, the world shifts for teams running the SEC gauntlet.
Oklahoma and Florida both drew schedules in 2025 that are the equivalent of running a marathon through a Minefield. Analysts already have these two among the top two hardest overall schedules in the country. That means a 9-3 OU or Florida team would have stacked up wins and battle scars against some of the best in college football, not just padding their records with cupcakes. Pate’s logic is simple but spot-on: in a 12-team setup, an SEC team that grinds out nine wins against these opponents is guaranteed a spot.
That opens the door for not just two or three, but possibly four SEC teams crashing the playoff party if the dominoes fall just right. And especially if you get a logjam of top-10 teams beating up on each other, as the schedule seems designed to deliver. This isn’t just talk for the sake of hot takes. The numbers and history back it up. The new era of playoff expansion means if a team like OU or Florida manages a 9-3 record, with those opponents, they haven’t just survived, they’ve earned a postseason ticket.
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