Category: NCAA Football

Over the past 58 seasons (1946-2003) 76 teams have won or shared in the “national championship” of Division I-A college football. Fourteen schools have won the championship or been co-champions more than once. Together they account for 60 of the 76 champion teams (78.9%).

Oklahoma (6 outright, 1 tie)
Notre Dame (5 outright, 3 ties)
Miami (4 outright, 1 tie)
Alabama (2 outright, 5 ties)
USC (3 outright, 3 ties)
Nebraska (3 outright, 2 ties)
Ohio State (2 outright, 4 ties)
Texas (2 outright, 1 tie)
Penn State, Florida State, Tennessee (2 outright each)
Michigan State (1 outright, 2 ties)
Michigan (1 outright, 1 tie)
LSU (2 ties)

Conference standings for all 76 champions and co-champions (teams included in the conference they played in during 2003):

Big 12 (11 outright, 5 ties)
SEC (6 outright, 10 ties)
Big 10 (6 outright, 9 ties)
Big East (6 outright, 1 tie)
Independent (5 outright, 3 ties)
Pac 10 (3 outright, 5 ties)
ACC (4 outright, 1 tie)
Mountain West (1 outright)

[See also here.]

It won’t happen for a number of reasons, some of them possibly even valid, but NewMexiKen would pay handsomely to watch USC play the winner of the Sugar Bowl.

Baton Rouge and Oklahoma City.

From T.J. Simers in the Los Angeles Times

I don’t know if you noticed the security guards in yellow jackets standing at the bottom of each aisle in the Rose Bowl. They stuck out here, because they were assigned to watch the spectators all day long, which meant their backs were turned to the action on the field.

Now I figured it’d be impossible to find anyone willing to turn their back on the Rose Bowl, but then I realized most of the guards were probably UCLA grads who had no reason to think anything interesting ever happens on the field behind them.

And as popular as the Trojans are going to be next year and with so many key performers returning, I’d imagine the security company is going to hire more guards to work USC’s games in the Coliseum. Sounds like a good UCLA fund-raiser.

Los Angeles Times columnist T.J. Simers on journalistic fair play:

Although I’ve been a diehard Trojan fan as long as I can remember, I’d like to reassure the losers who still support the Bruins that I intend to be as objective as always in writing about their crummy team, and their dull coach.

Simers goes after Michigan too.

It’s generally accepted that most of us who love the Trojans are rich and a cut above ordinary citizens. So when I return from San Jose, it’s going to make for an interesting couple of Rose Bowl days mingling with all the factory workers from Michigan who have come to the big state hoping to catch a glimpse of Arnold.

I’ve had the grueling experience of being bored by the Midwestern likes of Bubba I, Bubba II and Bubba III, the brothers-in-law, so the shock of listening to yokels cluck about the new Piggly Wiggly in town isn’t going to hit me quite as hard.

I’ve also been to Detroit before, and if you moved all the people from Philadelphia to Detroit, you’d have a pretty good idea of what hell must be like, so I look at this week as a good reminder to once again be on my best behavior.

From the Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times

Former Washington State coach Mike Price couldn’t have been sure about getting another football job after his firing seven months ago by Alabama because of a highly publicized visit to a Florida strip joint and allegations — a majority of which he has vehemently denied — about a night spent with strippers.

But not only does Price have a new coaching job, at Texas El Paso, he’s in a town apparently willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“Of course, that’s why he’s in El Paso and not going to Rose Bowls or rebuilding Alabama under the spiritual aura of Bear Bryant. Nobody else wanted him,” wrote El Paso Times columnist Joe Muench. “But UTEP needed him, and he’s willing to work for UTEP pay … and the Miners get a big-timer.”

Still, “Roll, Miners, roll!” doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Allen Barra has a solid piece on the Heisman. Published Friday, it’s still pertinent — and he predicted White would win.

The Mackey, the Lombardi, the Outland, the Biletnikoff—there are more than a dozen college football awards, and all of them taken together don’t generate one-tenth of the ink given to the Heisman Trophy. Why, exactly? What is particularly puzzling is that the Walter Camp Award, presented to the “nation’s top player” by the Walter Camp Foundation, has never caught on, considering that it is named for the father of football, the man without whom none of the other awards would exist. But then, the Walter Camp Foundation is in New Haven, Conn., and the Heisman Trophy is presented by the Downtown Athletic Club in New York. Which, come to think of it, probably answers the question right there….

And, by the way, why not present the Heisman sometime in mid-January, after the bowl games have been played? Why continue the pretense that the bowls aren’t part of the “season”? Since the bowl games determine the national championship and final rankings, why do the various groups and foundations that give out trophies pretend that the biggest games these kids will play don’t matter?

Every year, sportswriters wail and wail for a Heisman overhaul, and still nothing changes. So here’s a more feasible remedy. College football would gain some credibility by simply acknowledging that modern football is a division of labor among specialists. Gather up all the various year-end awards, including the Heisman, rent a ballroom, and present them all on the same night. If we can’t get the best players checked off on the Heisman ballot, maybe we can at least get them all in the same room.

From Morning Briefing in the Los Angeles Times

There is a 16-team college football playoff after all. Except the games are video games. CSTV and EA Sports got together to create a fantasy playoff that involves the top 15 BCS-ranked teams and Boise State.

Results of the first-round games will be announced on CSTV today at 4:30 p.m., with quarterfinal results coming Dec. 17, and semifinals Dec. 27. The champion will be crowned in the Crystal Bowl Jan. 4.

It’s another possible title for USC, which opens up against Purdue.

Michael Wilbon argues for a playoff.

Let me declare my baggage right now: I hate the BCS. I hate figure skating for pretty much the same reason. Anything that focuses attention on something other than the actual competition is inadequate, and often winds up being unfair. The debate becomes the issue, not the contest. The process runs too big a risk of providing a final result that is unfulfilling, or in this case ridiculous.

The New York Times’s Computer Ranking had USC first, followed by LSU, Michigan, Texas and Oklahoma.

Tony Kornheiser on the System Crash

The irony is that the BCS unwittingly got it right in one sense. It set up the perfect semifinals. LSU, at home in New Orleans, against Oklahoma in one game; USC, at home in California, against Michigan in the other. All that’s missing is the next game: The true national championship final.

USC Coach Pete Carroll said Sunday, “It seems so crazy that I’m watching Hawaii against Boise State at midnight and it matters to us. I don’t have all the answers but I think it’s clear there are some issues.”

Los Angeles Times: “USC is in negotiations to open next season against Virginia Tech in the BCA Football Classic, a school athletic official said Thursday.” This year the Hokies opened with Central Florida and the Trojans with Auburn.

Some background on the BCS computers from The New York Times.

This weekend will mark the end of the regular season in college football, and barring upsets of the top-ranked teams, there will be a tight race for the No. 2 spot in the nation.

So who would then help determine which team – Louisiana State or Southern California – would play top-ranked Oklahoma for the national championship, and which would be consigned to a lesser bowl game?

Why, an astrophysicist, of course; and an immunologist and an M.I.T.-trained mathematician from Indiana, not to mention a math professor from Virginia.

Granted, this is only part of the puzzle, but a crucial part nonetheless. Although games are won and lost on the field, the big-picture results come well after the last interception, fumble or field goal, when rankings derived from elaborate computer formulas are factored into the race known as the Bowl Championship Series.

SI.com’s Stewart Mandel applauds hiring of Mike Stoops: “Not only did the Wildcats land one of the architects of the nation’s most dominant defense the past four years, but they got someone with a keen understanding of what it takes to rebuild a program.”

Denver Post writer Bill Briggs toured the Big 12 this fall dressed in the colors of the opposing team. His tour included Lincoln on the day of the Nebraska-Kansas State game; a game Nebraska loss by the largest margin at home since 1958. The scene he describes might surprise you.

NewMexiKen read only a few of Briggs’s other Big 12 articles but those I read were amusing and interesting. Colleagues at the National Archives used to spend autumn Saturdays attending games at various colleges. It doesn’t seem like a half-bad pastime. Offhand NewMexiKen remembers going to games at eight different campuses. Seems like a good beginning.

Chris Dufresne in the Los Angeles Times takes his “best stab at the BCS bowl lineup, provided form holds among the top teams: Sugar: Oklahoma vs. USC; Rose: Texas vs. Michigan; Fiesta: LSU vs. Florida State; Orange: Miami vs. Ohio State.”

Good matchups.

Nebraska was 58-19 under Solich; 9-3 this year. See story from Omaha.com.

From ESPN.com

TCU was unable to land a spot in the Bowl Championship Series. Now it appears the Horned Frogs may turn down the next best thing.

The school is planning to decline an expected invitation to the GMAC Bowl because of academic considerations, athletic director Eric Hyman told The Washington Post on Wednesday night.

TCU had its sights sets on a BCS bowl, but those hopes were dashed by a loss to Southern Miss on Nov. 20. As a result, the Horned Frogs will likely finish second in Conference USA and earn an invitation to the GMAC.

However, Hyman says the school will likely decline the bowl bid because the game falls in the middle of their exam period (Dec. 18). The bowl could have pitted a pair of impressive mid-majors (TCU and Miami-Ohio) against each other.

“I can’t do that,” TCU Athletic Director Eric Hyman told the Washington Post on Wednesday night. “I have to be sensitive to our young people. They are student-athletes, but they are also students, and they are coming to school to get an education. We cannot disrupt their exams. It’s not fair to them.”

SI.com’s Stewart Mandel makes the case for LSU.

Jeff Sagarin has the following ranking for Strength of Schedule (through last Saturday):

1. Notre Dame
2. Colorado
3. Iowa State
4. Alabama
5. Texas A&M
6. Arizona
7. BYU
8. Northwestern
9. Illinois
10. Tennessee

As John notes in his comments to the earlier item, Arizona indeed has had a formidable 2003 schedule, but…

Arizona lost to LSU 59-13 currently ranked #3
Arizona lost to TCU 13-10 currently ranked #9
Arizona lost to Purdue 59-7 currently ranked #16
Arizona lost to Washington State 30-7 currently ranked #8
Arizona lost to USC 45-0 currently ranked #2

So, except for TCU of Conference USA, Arizona lost to four ranked opponents 193-27.

NewMexiKen wants the ‘Cats to do well. The old days of not quite good enough (10-2, 12-1) look pretty good now. But the hole is deep and they aren’t going to climb out of it soon.

And the tradition isn’t great. Arizona has not won a conference championship outright (Border, WAC, or Pac-10) in this alum’s lifetime. (They tied for first twice in the WAC and once in the PAC-10.)