Dillon Gabriel, Oklahoma to Host UCF in 2023: Report
Dillon Gabriel and the Oklahoma Sooners didn’t get off to the best start in his first season, going 6-7 in 2022 in OU’s first losing season since 1998.
Gabriel vowed to stick around for another season and will return along with a revamped roster in 2023 to see if the Sooners can turn things around in a big way. With the 2023 Big 12 schedule release merely hours away, 247Sports’ Brandon Marcello had an interesting report concerning Gabriel, the Sooners, and their 2023 schedule.
According to Marcello, Oklahoma will host UCF, Gabriel’s former school, in 2023 as a regular season Big 12 opponent.
UCF joins the Big 12 in 2023, alongside boarding partners BYU, Cincinnati, and Houston, while Oklahoma and Texas are set to leave for the SEC in 2025 (if not sooner). The Sooners and Knights have never met on the field but will do so for the first time as Big 12 foes.
Interestingly, the Knights are the only team entering the conference that Oklahoma hasn’t faced previously, having played BYU (1994, 2009), Houston (1981, 2004, 2016, 2019), and Cincinnati (2008, 2010) all at least twice.
With the league expanding from 10 to 14 teams, there will no longer be a true round-robin schedule with 13 opponents and only nine conference games. The new-look Big 12 will take some time to get used to, but Big 12 football fans are in for an absolute treat in 2023.
