Best of the Best Part III

I started this series of posts a little over a week ago, with an attempt to gain a little better knowledge of the history of the most successful programs in college football history. I’ve taken some statistical categories that I think are extremely important and currently using them to rank the top 17 programs overall. All of the stats used are for the modern-era (1970 – current). The original series of ranking the teams on all-time records is here.

It never ceases to amaze me as to the amount of sheer b.s. that gets printed on message boards and even in articles attributed to many of our mainstream journalists. Too many times we’re fed information and statistics regarding the history of a program that paint rosy pictures, often glossing over the bad. Wow, I can get off-topic in a hurry when traveling down that line of thought. I'll save this for a later post.

Back to the subject at hand. Today, I’m going to rate these teams by conference championships and conference winning percentages. Once again, this is very hard to get a historical perspective on due to the fact that Notre Dame is an independent and Penn St, FSU, and Miami joined conferences in the early 90’s. It brings up an interesting dilemma, especially with Notre Dame when placing them on the list of conference champions. They have 0. Should they be put at the bottom? I don’t think so. In fantasyland, if they were a member of a conference, they would probably have several on their resume. But, which conference? If it’s the Big 10, they would more than likely have thrown their hat into the 2 horse race and brought down Michigan and Ohio State’s large totals in this category. On the other hand, if it’s the Big East, the likely would have silly high totals too. There’s absolutely no fair way to handle the situation, but hey, life isn’t fair. I’ve decided to give them 10th place points.

Here’s a list of the rules.

• 12 points for a 12 team conference championship (SEC 1992 - ), (Big Twelve 1996 - )
• 11 points for 11 teams (Big Ten 1993 - )
• 10 points for 10 teams (Pac Ten 1978 - ), (Big Ten thru 1992), (SEC thru 1991)
• 9 points for 9 teams (ACC 1992-2003)
• 8 points for 8 teams ( Big 8 thru 1995), (SWC thru 1995), (Pac 8 thru 1977), (ACC thru 1991), (Big East)
• 6 points for a 6 team division (Big Twelve 1996 - ), (SEC 1992 - ), (ACC 2005 - )
• Split titles mean split points ( # of teams sharing title divided by teams eligible)

And the results are in

1. OKLAHOMA 170
2. ALABAMA 152.33
3. NEBRASKA 152
4. MICHIGAN 142.33
5. USC 140.33
6. FLORIDA 129
7. OHIO STATE 122.67
8. TEXAS 112
9. FSU 108
10. LSU 86
11. TENNESSEE 76.33
12. GEORGIA 74
13. UCLA 57.33
14. MIAMI 48
15. AUBURN 43
16. PENN STATE 16.5
17. NOTRE DAME 87 (10TH PLACE)

Again, my personal belief is that an SEC title should count for far more than a Big Ten, Big 8, SWC, or ACC due to the level of competition. However, the numbers are what they are, and there’s your list. When ranking from 1 – 17 in this category, I’ve given double points for conference championships because of the importance.

Some will argue that the following list will show just how powerful a team is. I’ll argue that it shows the level of competition. Here’s the conference winning percentages of these teams.

1. MICHIGAN 82
2. NEBRASKA 80
3. OHIO ST 77
4. OKLAHOMA 76
5. FSU 75
6. USC 72
7. ALABAMA 70
8. FLORIDA 68
9. TENNESSEE 66
10. GEORGIA 66
11. TEXAS 65
12. UCLA 63
13. AUBURN 62
14. PENN ST 61
15. MIAMI 61
16. LSU 58
17. NOTRE DAME 66 (10TH PLACE)

I’d like to mention again that due to a recent job change, I’m not able to post as often as I’d like. I leave the house around 5:30 am and usually have to stop at the ball field for the kid’s practices or games, making it 9 pm or so when I finally get home. Since it’s the off season, and most of the junk that I write about isn’t time sensitive, or hot-off-the-wire, it’s not that big of a deal. It just may take 2 or 3 days to put together what I used to do in one.