Oklahoma State Likely Set to Face Final Ranked Opponent of 2025

The Cowboys probably won't have to worry about playing teams in the top 25 after this weekend.

Oct 18, 2025; Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA; Oklahoma State Cowboys interim head coach Doug Meacham on the side lines during the second half against the Cincinnati Bearcats at Boone Pickens Stadium. Mandatory Credit: William Purnell-Imagn Images | William Purnell-Imagn Images

Oklahoma State is set to face another ranked team this weekend, but it might be its last tanked opponent of 2025.

The Cowboys are coming off their sixth straight loss, falling to Cincinnati on Homecoming. Despite a shirtless section, a mostly full stadium and a pocket of bananas in Stillwater, OSU came up short in its quest for an upset.

The 49-17 final score doesn’t exactly indicate how close the game was for most of the night. While the Bearcats might not have been in true danger of losing at any point, OSU had done enough to keep it interesting until some costly second-half mistakes pushed the game firmly out of reach. 

Still, it’s hard to deny that Cincinnati was clearly the better team in a game it won by 32 points on the road. With that performance, the Bearcats moved up from No. 24 to No. 21 in this week’s AP poll.

While the Bearcats are still unbeaten in Big 12 play and control their own destiny for the conference championship, they might not be the best team OSU faces in this two-week span. On Saturday, the Cowboys will travel to Lubbock to face No. 14 Texas Tech.

After entering last week as the No. 7 team in the country and the Big 12’s highest-ranked squad, the Red Raiders suffered their first loss of the season to Arizona State, which re-entered the polls at No. 24 this week. While the Cowboys’ upcoming opponent isn’t flirting with a spot in the top 5 anymore, the Red Raiders still pose a massive threat to Doug Meacham’s squad.

While this weekend in Texas could certainly get ugly in a hurry for the Pokes, perhaps even in a similar fashion to their loss at Oregon earlier this season, it should be the last juggernaut the Cowboys face all year. Sure, OSU will still face some solid squads along the way and will almost certainly enter every matchup as a clear underdog, but it won’t be entering those matchups having to worry about the nearly 40-point spread it faces this weekend.

Of OSU’s four opponents after Texas Tech, none received a vote in the AP poll this week. While Iowa State, Kansas State and Kansas all entered the year with high hopes and could give the Cowboys a rude awakening in any matchup, those teams have all lost any steam, if any, that they had coming into the year.

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