Oklahoma State Is The Second-Most Experienced Power Five Team

Remember when we kept hearing how young last year’s Oklahoma State team was? Wait until next year. Heck, wait until 2017. Yeah, not so much the case anymore. Phil Steele recently released his 2016 CFB experience rankings, and Oklahoma State is the second-most experienced Power Five team behind Tennessee.

The categories for consideration here are offensive line starts, percent of yards returning, percent of tackles returning, senior starters and senior two deep. Here’s how Steele explains his ranking system.

I then devised a formula that factors all five into the total points equation and then turned the point total into a number from 100 to 0. A 100 would be a team with 25 seniors (NCAA scholarship limit) in the two deep and every yard and tackle returning and 120+ career starts on the offensive line. A 0 would be a team with no experience and 0 seniors in the two deep.

Here’s your top 10.

I guess if we want to call BYU a Power Five team (are we doing that?), OSU comes in third. The Pokes roll deep in experience with 31 juniors and seniors in Steele’s projected two deep.

The optimist in me wants to think all of this will come in handy when OSU goes on the road to Norman, Manhattan and Waco. The cynic notes that a below average offensive line with one more year of experience is just an older below average offensive line (to this point, Alabama and tOSU are both in the bottom 20).