Betting Odds Suggest Oklahoma State Football Has Nearly Perfect Schedule in 2026

STILLWATER — Earlier this week, Marshall went through and made predictions for each game. Without tipping his exact picks, it’s safe to say he’s optimistic about 2026.

Given Marshall’s history of predictions, can we really trust that guy? (Totally kidding, boss, please keep the paychecks coming!)

However, sportsbooks literally do this for a living. While it’s too early for win totals or conference odds, national championship odds are up on FanDuel.

Using those reveals a couple of things about Oklahoma State’s 2026 schedule.

1. Marshall Was Right

FanDuel puts Oklahoma State’s odds of a national championship next season at +60,000 (as in a $100 bet pays out $6,000). While that’s not very good, it does put the Cowboys in a three-way tie for eighth in the conference.

If you assume Oklahoma State wins all games against teams with worse odds at home and all teams with significantly worse odds on the road, then the Pokes will go 7-5 overall and 5-4 in conference play in 2026.

In 2025, four Big 12 teams went 5-4 and finished tied for seventh place in the conference. One of those teams, TCU, even cracked the final AP Poll, finishing 25th.

Under normal circumstances, a middle-of-the-pack finish and an outside chance as a top 25 end-of-season ranking wouldn’t be worth writing about, but if Eric Morris can do that in year one, then what would year two look like?

2. Maybe 7-5 Isn’t Good Enough

According to the odds, the three biggest swing games for the Cowboys are the following:

Oct. 17 at Houston (+60,000)

Nov. 21 at Arizona State (+40,000)

Nov. 28 vs Kansas (+75,000)

Let’s start with the Jayhawks. Of the three games, the home finale is the only win projected based on our odds system. The Cowboys feel like a team that will get better as the season progresses, given all of the changes Morris and company should experience.

Kansas faces BYU the previous week, and the Cougars have the second-best national championship odds in the conference. So KU coming off what should be a tough one and then having to put up with a crowd of excited Cowboy fans sounds like a recipe for a win.

To be fair, the Cowboys don’t have a gimme the week before, either, facing Arizona State. Speaking of the Sun Devils, they could end the season on cruise control, facing Colorado, UCF (road), Oklahoma State and Arizona (road) in consecutive weeks to wrap things up.

Arizona State is well-coached, but if this team were to take a week off, then a home game right before the big rivalry clash might just be it. Of course, even FanDuel doesn’t really know how these teams are going to do. By the time November rolls around, the Cowboys might be more than capable of handling Arizona State’s best, but for now, let’s just pretend FanDuel knows all and continue looking for external reasons the results could shift in spite of the odds.

Which brings us to a Houston team facing the Cowboys during the middle of its absolute worst three-game schedule.

The week before the Cougars travel to Kansas State, which is projected to do better than them by a significant amount. The week after hosting OSU, Houston travels to Utah, which is projected to do much better than Kansas State.

Oklahoma State faces UCF and Colorado at home on either side of this one, and both of those teams don’t project well according to national championship odds.

If the Cowboys and Cougars are really on similar levels, then the schedule could cancel out Houston’s home-field advantage and put this into true coin-flip territory.

3. Things Get Dark Late

You don’t need AI to know back-to-back-to-back weeks at Kansas State, vs Texas Tech, at Arizona State is the toughest part of Oklahoma State’s schedule.

For what it’s worth, the odds agree and project Oklahoma State to lose all three. Considering the Cowboys feel like a 7-5 or 8-4 team overall, that means Oklahoma State could very well be 7-1 or 6-2 when that three-game swing starts.

Late last year, it was clear Oklahoma State didn’t know how to win games. In theory, that shouldn’t be an issue this year, and maybe that will help the Cowboys weather the late storm. If nothing else, the Cowboys could be the talk of college football before they crash back down to earth in November.

4. The Big 12 Did OSU Some Favors

Teams get to dodge six Big 12 teams a year, and Oklahoma State missed a few doozies.

Here are the conference teams Oklahoma State won’t play:

BYU: +8,000, 2nd in Big 12

Utah: +10,000, 3rd

Zona: +22,500, 5th

TCU: +40,000, T6th

Baylor: +60,000, T8th

Cincy: +100,000, T11th

FanDuel believes the Big 12 has three teams competing for playoff spots in 2026, and the Cowboys get to skip two of them.

Six Big 12 teams tied for the longest odds FanDuel would give out. Of those, Oklahoma State gets five of them on the schedule, and three of those games come on the road, where the Cowboys will presumably need more help.

To make things even better, Oklahoma State opens conference play with two of those longshots (West Virginia and UCF). As always, the Big 12 is sure to get messy once things get going, but for now, Oklahoma State’s draw seems relatively good.

5. Oklahoma State Has a Near-Perfect Schedule

Pretty much everything else was building to this. The Cowboys’ schedule feels like the perfect mix of winnable games combined with opportunities for fun.

Let’s look at the week-by-week schedule with the odds attached to remember how good or bad these teams project to be, with wins bolded and swing games italicized.

1. At Tulsa (+100,000)
2. Vs Oregon (+950)
3. Vs Murray State (FCS team)
4. At West Virginia (+100,000)
5. BYE
6. Vs UCF (+100,000)
7. At Houston (+60,000)
8. Vs Colorado (+100,000)
9. At Iowa State (+100,000)
10. At Kansas State (+20,000)
11. Vs Texas Tech (+1,400)
12. At Arizona State (+40,000)
13. Vs Kansas (+75,000)

The Oregon and Texas Tech games jump out. FanDuel has those teams ranked fifth and eighth, respectively, according to national championship odds.

It’s definitely possible those turn out to be miserable Saturdays for OSU fans, but we saw the worst-case scenario in 2025, when those teams outscored the Cowboys 111-3. Surely things can only go up from there.

Plus, you can’t have truly unforgettable moments in the regular season without running into a Goliath, or in this case, two. If Oklahoma State manages to hang with either of those teams, national respect for the Cowboys will surge. And if they get beaten by 14-plus points, well, that was what everyone expected, so it’s not like Morris and the program have anything to lose.

Plus, both of those games are at home. Look back at the schedule and tell me you’re not excited for The Walk, the tailgating scene and the excitement inside BPS at kickoff as every Orange-clad fan wonders what if.

Regardless of the result itself, facing the Red Raiders easily offers OSU more to gain and slightly less to lose than facing either BYU or Utah. So Oklahoma State got the best possible draw from the conference’s top three.

Add in the already-covered nice mix of perceived lower-tier conference opponents and the spots the swing games fall, and it feels like a recipe for a much-needed fun fall.