How do you figure out which college football team is the greatest to have ever played the game?
You’d have to consider wins and losses, of course. But 231 Division I college football teams have had undefeated and untied records going all the way back to Princeton in 1870. In the modern era (roughly since 1960) there have been 53 undefeated football teams.
So, what else?
Quality of opposition. This is fairly easy. Just look at the schedules played by various undefeated teams. Tulane went 12-0 in 1998 but only played 3 teams with winning records, including BYU in its bowl game. Tennessee obviously had a much more difficult path to its perfect record that year and was justifiably crowned the National Champion. In 2004, undefeated Utah was similarly maligned by its unchallenging schedule despite that the Utes were, by all accounts, a formidable football team. They finished 4th in the polls that year behind two other unblemished squads and a once-beaten Oklahoma.
So then how do you separate undefeated teams who played comparably tough schedules?
Domination of opposition. In 2004 both USC and Auburn ran the table playing similarly high-quality opponents. Without playing each other directly, voters in the AP poll were left to determine who deserved to be number one. (The coaches poll was obligated to crown the BCS Championship game winner as champ.) The media overwhelmingly picked USC and all they had to do was look at the last game each team played. Auburn won a three-point squeaker in the Sugar Bowl over Virginia Tech, whilst the Trojans annihilated previously unbeaten Oklahoma 55-19.
Now, taking these three things into account — perfect record, quality of schedule, and domination of opponents — you start to develop a pretty short list. A list with teams like 2005 Texas, 2004 USC and 2001 Miami. And here’s where the true debate begins. How do you compare the best, most dominant teams of different seasons without relying on mere gut-instinct or — even worse — bias? How do you factor out team or conference or regional loyalty and get down to the God’s honest truth about something, like the fact that the 1996 Florida Gators were a more kick-ass football team than the 2002 Ohio State Buckeyes?
Well I propose a performance evaluation. A ratings system that attempts to consider all factors which might make one college football goliath better than another.
The system must originate from some kind of expert consensus. For that, I’ve decided to use the final AP Poll rankings for each season. By looking at the scores for all games of any particular team, I assign values to the margins of victory. This takes both quality of opponents and domination over them into account.
The margin of victory versus all an unranked opponents is multiplied by one.
The margin of victory versus any opponent ranked from 25 to 16 in the final AP poll is multiplied by two.
The margin of victory versus opponents ranked from 15 to 11 is multiplied by three.
The margin of victory versus opponents ranked from 10 to 6 is multiplied by four.
The margin of victory versus opponents ranked from 5 to 1 is multiplied by 5.
I’ve decided to make a ratings list for all National Champions going back to 1983. Since there are some champs who lost games, we will also need to factor in losses.
Any loss to an unranked opponent receives a subtraction of 60 points.
Any loss to an opponent ranked from 25 to 11 in the final AP poll gets a subtraction of 30 points.
Any loss to an opponent ranked in the Top 10 gets a subtraction of 10 points.
And what about the ye-olden-days when college football had no overtime? All ties are considered half a loss.
Now to further ferret out the best of the best, there are some factors which require the awarding of bonus points.
A bonus of 25 points will be awarded for beating any otherwise unbeaten football team. This nudges teams that win battles of unbeatens over teams that beat opponents with other blemishes. For example, 2005 Texas beating undefeated USC or 2002 Ohio State beating undefeated Miami is more impressive than 2007 LSU beating once-beaten Ohio State or the 2003 co-champs versus each of their respective blemished opponents.
Another bonus of 20 points should be awarded for beating a final AP Top 10 opponent in their home stadium or city and 10 points for beating an opponent ranked from 11 to 25 in their home stadium or city.
Once you’ve added and subtracted all these factors, you divide the sum by the total number of games played.
To give you an example of the system in action, let’s calculate the score of last year’s National Champ, the LSU Tigers.
2007 LSU Schedule:
Mississippi State (won by 45, multiply by 1) = 45 points.
Virginia Tech (won by 41 points, multiply by 4) = 164 points.
Middle Tennessee (won by 44 points, multiply by 1) = 44 points. South Carolina (won by 12 points, multiply by 1) = 12 points.
Tulane (won by 25 points, multiply by 1) = 25 points.
Florida (won by 4 points, multiply by 3) = 12 points.
Kentucky (lost) = minus 60 points.
Auburn (won by 6 points, multiply by 3) = 18 points.
Alabama (won by 7 points, multiply by 1) = 7 points.
Louisiana Tech (won by 48 points, multiply by 1) = 48 points.
Mississippi (won by 17 points, multiply by 1) = 17 points.
Arkansas (lost) = minus 60 points.
Tennessee (won by 7 points, multiply by 3) = 21 points.
Ohio State (won by 14 points, multiply by 5) = 70 points.
Add it all together and you get 423. Divide that sum by 14 games. 2007 LSU gets a rating of 30.21.
Now, let’s see how a team like the 2005 Longhorns fare with having gone undefeated and scoring some bonus points as well.
2005 Texas Longhorns Schedule:
Louisiana-Lafayette (won by 57 points, multiply by 1) = 57 points.
Ohio State (won by 3 points, multiply by 5) = 15 points.
Rice (won by 41 points, multiply by 1) = 41 points.
Missouri (won by 31 points, multiply by 1) = 31 points.
Oklahoma (won by 33 points, multiply by 2) = 66 points.
Colorado (won by 25 points, multiply by 1) = 25 points.
Texas Tech (won by 35 points, multiply by 2) = 70 points. Oklahoma State (won by 19 points, multiply by 1) = 19 points.
Baylor (won by 62 points, multiply by 1) = 62 points.
Kansas (won by 52 points, multiply by 1) = 52 points.
Texas A&M; (won by 11 points, multiply by 1) = 11 points.
Colorado (won by 67 points, multiply by 1) = 67 points.
USC (won by 3 points, multiply by 5) = 15 points.
You may look at this and say — what? Texas only gets 15 points each for beating both Ohio State and USC, while they get 62 points for running the score up on Baylor?
Two things here. We’re trying to determine what juggernaut is better than what other juggernaut and one of the ways to do that is by awarding points for domination. Three point wins over USC and Ohio State, impressive as they are, are not dominations. So the point totals are small. But here’s where the bonus comes in. Texas beat Ohio State in Columbus and USC in the Rose Bowl which, for these purposes, counts as a USC home game. Texas gets an additional 20 points each. Additionally, Texas gave USC its only loss which is another 25 points. So, in essence, the win in Columbus was equal to a 35-point win over an unranked opponent and the victory in Pasadena was equal to a 60-point win over an unranked opponent.
Adding it all together we get 596 total points, divided by 13 games for a rating of 45.84.
Clearly, the 2005 Longhorns were a better juggernaut than the 2007 LSU Tigers.
Using this system, here are how all the National Champions and co-champions over the last 26 seasons going back to 1983 rank against each other:
The first two, 1971 Nebraska and 1972 USC each won National Titles and are often mentioned among the elite teams of college football. The other teams failed to win titles but are often regarded as among the best ever. 1994 Penn State, for example, went undefeated the same year as Nebraska, but did not share a piece of the title even though, by this rating system, the Nitany Lions score considerably higher than the 1994 Cornhuskers. Likewise, the 1983 Nebraska team fares better than the 1983 Hurricanes which beat them in the Orange Bowl by one point. 1983 Nebraska and 1994 Penn State are widely considered two of the best teams to not win a National Title.
When comparing teams over long periods of time, many college football fans wonder how teams from thirty years ago would do against more recent teams, the athleticism of which has clearly increased sharply.
An interesting take on this was given by ESPN’s college football crew in a 2006 viewer call-in contest which pitted great teams against each other in a NCAA tournament-style bracket. The old-timers, such as Lou Holtz, readily accepted the results, having frist-hand seen most of the seasons represented transpire. The younger members of the crew, like Kirk Herbstreit, were more skeptical. Or maybe incredulous is more like it.
Here’s a clip of the ESPN Classics broadcast.
hot
I think Herbstreit has a valid point about head-to-head match-ups. How would Johnny Rodgers and the rest of the 1971 Cornhuskers fare against the “six first-round NFL draft picks of 2001 Miami? It’s hard to say. 1971 Nebraska was a mix of physicality and finesse that has rarely been seen before or since. And they accomplished a feat that the 2001 Hurricanes can only dream of. They beat the second, third and fourth best teams in the county. And two of those by pretty wide margins. The Hurricanes highest-ranked opponent finished 8th. Even so, it’s doubtful that many people would pick the 1971 Huskers to beat the 2001 Hurricanes if some wormhole in time opened up and allowed them to play.
But what about teams that suited up in seasons a little closer together?
1995 Nebraska won the ESPN vote-in contest. And the same team also got the highest score in my performance evaluation (by a fairly wide margin). But Herbstreit was certain that 2001 Miami and 2004 USC were “the two best teams in this”.
His arguments are three-fold. First, he didn’t think the 1995 Huskers faced very tough competition. Second, Nebraska is just slow — USC and Miami would have killed them with speed. And third, both teams — Miami especially with its “six first-round NFL draft picks” — were loaded with the kind of ridiculous talent that Nebraska just couldn’t match.
But does any of the actual analysis bear these sentiments out or was Herbstreit merely arguing from his gut? Because 1995 Nebraska and 2001 Miami are the two highest-rated teams in my system, let’s just forget about 2004 USC (which placed 6th) and compare and contrast the top two.
Did 1995 Nebraska face weaker competition than 2001 Miami? Depends on how you dissect it. Miami played six teams that finished in the AP Top 25 in 2001. Nebraska played only four. But the four teams that Nebraska faced all finished in the AP Top 10, whereas Miami only faced one Top 10 team. Three of Nebraska’s opponents, in fact, finished higher than Miami’s toughest opponent.
It breaks down like this:
1995 Nebraska beat #2 Florida, #5 Colorado, #7 Kansas State and #10 Kansas. 2001 Miami beat #8 Nebraska, #14 Syracuse, #15 Florida State, #18 Virginia Tech, #19 Washington and #21 Boston College.
Beyond the rankings, though, Nebraska faced two pretty tough unranked opponents — Michigan State and Arizona State. Nebraska handed both the Spartans and Sun Devils easily their worst losses of the season. The Huskers embarrassed Michigan State in its home stadium 50-10, the same place in-state rival Michigan left with a loss that year. Arizona State is a program that is sometimes upper-echolon and sometimes mediocre. The afternoon of September 16, 1995 in Lincoln, they were beaten beyond mediocrity, 77-28. No other team on Arizona State’s schedule managed even half that score against them. PAC-10 champ USC, for example, could only scratch-up 31 points versus the Sun Devils in a game played at the Colosseum.
The remaining six teams on each of Nebraska’s and Miami’s schedules were a collection of equally weak patsies.
So then who had the tougher schedule? Well, with four Top 10s versus one, including the second and fifth best teams of 1995, how can you not go with Nebraska on this?
Next assertion. Miami’s speed would have killed Nebraska.
This would be true if it were 1991 Nebraska versus 2001 Miami. But it’s not. Nebraska gained an influx of speed after a period in the late 80s and early 90s of getting whipped by faster teams like Florida State, Miami, Washington and Colorado. The result was a speedy Cornhusker dynasty which pretty much stretched from 1993 to 2001. The 1995 Nebraska team was at the pinnacle of this dynasty.
But if you need more tangible proof of Nebraska’s speed, look to the 1996 Fiesta Bowl versus Florida. This is the 62-24 debacle that truly took the ’95 Cornhuskers beyond everybody else in college football. But before kickoff, general opinion favored the Gators. Nebraska was called too slow for the Florida speedsters and its option-offense too antique to compete with the super-wily mind of Steve Spurrier and his Fun-and-Gun attack.
As Lou Holtz pointed out, though, Nebraska didn’t need any flash. They just bowled the opposition over. True as this is, the fact that the 1995 Huskers were anything but slow, also helped.
Herbstreit’s third assumption — Nebraska couldn’t match Miami’s level of talent as clearly indicated by the number of NFL draft first-rounders.
Well, okay. That’s a nice feather in Miami’s cap. But where players go in the draft has as much to do with the need of NFL teams as it does the actual talent of those drafted. Many first-rounders end up becoming Pro-Bowlers. But many do not. Some second and third rounders become Pro-Bowlers. Many do not. A few lower-rounders become Pro-Bowlers. Most do not.
So while kudos to 2001 Miami for its six first-rounders, it’s really not much of measure of team talent unless Division I started playing six-man football. But don’t hold your breath for that.
So what is a good measure? How about the total number of players from both rosters who eventually did go to the NFL. The 2001 Miami team had 28 players go on to the NFL. 1995 Nebraska had 26. And yet, Nebraska’s best player, Tommy Frazier, was not one of those due to the blood clot he’d suffered. Were it not for that, you could say the team had 27 NFL-caliber players.
Some Tommy Frazier highlights.
28 versus 27. Could you even call that a gap? Maybe the way those quarter-inch spaces between sidewalk slabs are gaps. Sort of.
Regardless, the greatness of a team isn’t determined by individual talent, anyway. There is cohesion and coaching to consider. The intangibles. Tommy Frazier may have never played a snap in the NFL, but in college he has gone down as one of the game’s best. A general on the field and as about as easy to tackle as a ghost.
And what of the coaching element? In a head-to-head match-up, does anybody really believe that Larry Coker would have outcoached Tom Osborne at the peak of his career? Against top opponents, both teams exploded in the second quarter to put their respective games nearly out of reach by half-time. But while Coker’s team dinked around and got outscored 14-3 in the second half by a second-rate Nebraska team, Osborne’s men unleashed a relentless second-half torrent that Steve Spurrier still sees in his nightmares.
So there you go. All three of Herbstreit’s assumptions are basically bunk.
What’s worse, though, is that Herbsreit overlooks the one element I consider to be the most important in determining the greatest college football team of all time.
Domination.
In 1995, the Nebraska Cornhuskers pretty much invented the word as it pertains to college football. 2001 Miami frequently showed instances of the same dominance (as have many other teams), but they also showed moments of vulnerability. Namely against Virginia Tech and Boston College, a pair of 8-4 teams that could have ruined Miami’s perfect season. Indeed, Tech very nearly did.
Nebraska, on the other hand, never sweated a moment past the fist quarter the entire season. No team finished within 23 points of Nebraska except for a Washington State team that cut the lead from 21 to 14 with a last-minute touchdown on Nebraska’s only “off” day of the season. Moreover it was what Nebraska did to so-called “equals” that truly separates this team from others.
Let’s look at the games against those four Top 10 opponents a little closer. Against #9 Kansas, Nebraska used an unstoppable running attack and a bruising defense to post a 41-3 win. The same M.O. was employed against #7 Kansas State to the tune of 49-25. In both games the defense itself scored two touchdowns. Against #5 Colorado, a balanced attack of 226 yards rushing and 241 passing, produced a 44-21 win. Against #2 Florida, Nebraska had no need to pass as it pounded away at the hapless Gators to the tune of 524 yards rushing. Another 105 yards were tacked on through the air for fun, giving Nebraska a gaudy 629 total yards.
And yet, when the polls settled, the Gators remained, in the eyes of the nation, the second best team in the land. And, indeed, when calculated by my system, the 1995 Florida team gets a very respectable score of 38.69. A better rating than 19 of the last 29 National Champions and comparable to the Miami teams of the late 1980s or just slightly under the 2000 Oklahoma Sooners. Not bad company, even with that 62-24 albatross.
So there it is. My assessment of the greatest college football teams ever and particularly the one that I consider to be the absolute best. Perhaps you feel there’s something flawed in my system. Tell me about it in the comments section. Propose your own system to fix those flaws if you feel so inclined.
