The Sooners are a sizable dog in the Cheez-It Bowl. The 2022 Cheez-It Bowl should be explosive. Oklahoma quarterback Dillon Gabriel versus Florida State quarterback Jordan Travis will be worth the price of admission alone. While the game should be entertaining, is there any value with Oklahoma on either the point spread or moneyline? They're a sizable dog versus Florida State – something that would have seemed unfathomable over the last few seasons.
Oklahoma Sooners vs. Florida State Seminoles – 2022 Cheez It Bowl
Date: Thursday, December 29, 2022 – 5:30 PM ET
Location: Camping World Stadium, Orlando, FL
NCAA Football Odds: Seminoles -9.5
Trends, Splits
The Sooners are 2-3 away from home this season, 2-3 against the spread.
The Seminoles are 4-1 straight up away from home this season, 5-0 against the spread.
Oklahoma is 4-6 straight up in its last 10 games, 3-7 ATS. Florida State is 7-3 in its last 10, 7-3 ATS.
This is the eighth meeting between the two schools. They last played in 2011, with Oklahoma winning 23-13. Oklahoma leads the series 6-1, with a 3-1 record in bowl games.
Oklahoma Sooners
The Oklahoma Sooners had a very rough ride this season, the first year under new head coach Brent Venables after Lincoln Riley left the school for USC. Venables is an elite defensive coach, but he did not inherit elite defensive talent in Year 1 at Oklahoma. He went through a difficult transition period in which he found it hard to find the right scheme, the right formations, the right formula to make Oklahoma’s defense formidable. Oklahoma was regularly shredded by Big 12 Conference opponents. Texas, Kansas State, TCU, and others ran right through Oklahoma’s defense. The Sooners labored to a 6-6 season and created a lot of questions Venables will have to answer in 2023 and 2024.
Oklahoma did not have great defenses in recent years, but the Sooners still won a lot of games because of Lincoln Riley’s offenses, which produced multiple Heisman Trophy winners and were able to score over 35 and 40 points per game. Oklahoma’s offense was good for a portion of the 2022 season, but when starting quarterback Dillon Gabriel got injured, the Sooners were in huge trouble. They absorbed multiple losses and fell out of the Big 12 race. Gabriel will play in this game, and he gives Oklahoma a chance to make a very big statement which could lead to a much bigger 2023 season for the Sooners.
Florida State Seminoles
The Seminoles entered this season with a lot of questions about the health and overall direction of the program under head coach Mike Norvell, but after 12 games, they should feel much more at ease about the future. Norvell brought along quarterback Jordan Travis and molded him into a far better player than most people expected. Florida State did go through a tough time in October, losing three straight games – two of them at home – but the Seminoles bounced back and were dominant in November during the stretch run of the season. Florida State’s line play got better.
The team got tougher. The Seminoles displayed fewer weaknesses. They were playing the best football in the ACC at the end of the regular season, even though they didn’t make the ACC Championship Game due to that three-game losing streak. Florida State enters this game on a high note.
Sooners vs. Seminoles Prediction:
Seminoles 49, Sooners 34
