Wasn't there a movie made in the 1950's about a fictious school, maybe St. Marys, out of Cal;ifornia that starred either John Wayne or Charleston Heston as an head coach at the school?
An Evaluation of National Championships 1936-2013
- Thread starter selmaborntidefan
- Start date
I found the answer to my question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trouble_Along_the_Way
I always thought that maybe there was a conection to Santa Clara.,
Looked up Santa Clara football and found that they also bested the CBB UK squad in the 1950 Orange Bowl.
1950 Orange Bowl - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
1938 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: TCU, 10-0
Unbeaten/Untied teams:#2 Tennessee, #3 Duke, #4 Oklahoma, #11 Texas Tech
Unbeaten teams with ties: #18 Villanova, 8-0-1
Stop me if you've heard this one: an SEC team puts a high-powered offense and a stifling defense on the field, tears through the conference undefeated with mosly wipeouts...and the voters give the national championship to someone else, a team who played nobody worth a damn. It happened in 1938, and it was only just beginning, too.
1) Stop me if you've heard this one.....
The top four teams in the final rankings are all undefeated. They all look good. One gets the hype and votes while the other three, well, are left to cry in their collective beer.
You're probably wondering how in the world TCU rose to the top. The first poll (October 17) put them at number 7 and after wiping the floor with Marquette, a budding powerhouse that went 1-7 and was shut out four times, voters were so impressed they moved TCU up three spots to fourth - behind 37 champs Pitt, 36 champs Minnesota, and 37 runner-up Cal. TCU then beat a decent Baylor team and jumped all the way up to number two. When Pitt lost the next week to Carnegie Mellon, TCU rose to #1 with a narrow seven-vote lead (48-41) over Notre Dame. The following week, TCU got the "you're not Notre Dame" treatment when they lost 29 of their 48 votes, 19 of which jumped to the Irish and another 5 to Tennessee. To be fair, the Irish jump was legitimate given they stunned Minnesota. The Irish then beat Northwestern and were on the verge of their first-ever AP national championship. TCU ended their season - and then learned that 8-2 USC had stunned the Irish in Los Angeles on December 3. The bulk of the voters translated via osmosis to TCU, and the Horned Frogs - who had the nation's best quarterback in Davey O' Brien - won the AP national title. It's amazing that on the same day that Notre Dame lost, the Volunteers put a 47-0 pounding on Ole Miss.....an unranked 9-2 Ole Miss by the way. The Vols did jump to #2, but they weren't particularly close to TCU, losing the first-place tally by a count of 55-16.
2) Did the right team win the national championship?
Not a chance in Hell.
The poll was taken prior to TCU's win over Carnegie Mellon in the Sugar Bowl. That win was the ONLY opponent TCU played that was even ranked in the top 20. Tennessee, by contrast, beat #13 Alabama, a team so good, in fact, that the Tide had the nation's best overall record among all teams in the five-year period of 1934-38 (41-4-3, better even than powerhouse Minnesota's 35-5 and Pitt's 40-5-4). The Vols won, 13-0. TCU did do what Pitt couldn't manage to do - beat Carnegie Mellon by 8 points, but Tennessee's thundering 17-0 win over Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl knocks the Sooners out of any discussion, and the Volunteers' substantially better schedule even before that time - and plus, the SEC went 35-17 in out of conference play, the best in the country.
Had the polls been taken AFTER the bowl games or with any of the modern sense of what makes a good football team, Tennessee would have won the national championship. Duke lost to the same USC team that beat Notre Dame, and it would have come down to a ballot contest between TCU and Tennessee (as it was already).
What SHOULD have happened, of course, is either:
a) a BCS-style game between TCU and Tennessee OR
b) a four-team playoff of TCU, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Duke.
What we likely wind up with - yet again - is Tennessee vs TCU, but in the poll era, this one stands out as a very bad anomaly. While it's true that "just because you played a tougher schedule doesn't mean you'd win head-to-head," the fact remains that TCU's rise to the top ONLY happened because in the initial poll they were rated ahead of Tennessee and never lost.
We do well to remember that in 1938, the SEC was not thought of as a powerhouse by any means. As of the end of the 1938 season, the SEC was 2-4 overall against the perceived best conference, the Big Ten. When Tennessee played Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, it marked only the second-ever meeting between and SEC team and a Big Eight team, the first a tie between Vandy and Oklahoma in 1933. The SEC was also 14-9-4 against the SWC, so it's not as though the conference as a whole was perceived as great. But given the circumstances, Tennessee was robbed in 1938 - and believe it or not, it was about to happen again in 1939.
National champion: TCU, 10-0
Unbeaten/Untied teams:#2 Tennessee, #3 Duke, #4 Oklahoma, #11 Texas Tech
Unbeaten teams with ties: #18 Villanova, 8-0-1
Stop me if you've heard this one: an SEC team puts a high-powered offense and a stifling defense on the field, tears through the conference undefeated with mosly wipeouts...and the voters give the national championship to someone else, a team who played nobody worth a damn. It happened in 1938, and it was only just beginning, too.
1) Stop me if you've heard this one.....
The top four teams in the final rankings are all undefeated. They all look good. One gets the hype and votes while the other three, well, are left to cry in their collective beer.
You're probably wondering how in the world TCU rose to the top. The first poll (October 17) put them at number 7 and after wiping the floor with Marquette, a budding powerhouse that went 1-7 and was shut out four times, voters were so impressed they moved TCU up three spots to fourth - behind 37 champs Pitt, 36 champs Minnesota, and 37 runner-up Cal. TCU then beat a decent Baylor team and jumped all the way up to number two. When Pitt lost the next week to Carnegie Mellon, TCU rose to #1 with a narrow seven-vote lead (48-41) over Notre Dame. The following week, TCU got the "you're not Notre Dame" treatment when they lost 29 of their 48 votes, 19 of which jumped to the Irish and another 5 to Tennessee. To be fair, the Irish jump was legitimate given they stunned Minnesota. The Irish then beat Northwestern and were on the verge of their first-ever AP national championship. TCU ended their season - and then learned that 8-2 USC had stunned the Irish in Los Angeles on December 3. The bulk of the voters translated via osmosis to TCU, and the Horned Frogs - who had the nation's best quarterback in Davey O' Brien - won the AP national title. It's amazing that on the same day that Notre Dame lost, the Volunteers put a 47-0 pounding on Ole Miss.....an unranked 9-2 Ole Miss by the way. The Vols did jump to #2, but they weren't particularly close to TCU, losing the first-place tally by a count of 55-16.
2) Did the right team win the national championship?
Not a chance in Hell.
The poll was taken prior to TCU's win over Carnegie Mellon in the Sugar Bowl. That win was the ONLY opponent TCU played that was even ranked in the top 20. Tennessee, by contrast, beat #13 Alabama, a team so good, in fact, that the Tide had the nation's best overall record among all teams in the five-year period of 1934-38 (41-4-3, better even than powerhouse Minnesota's 35-5 and Pitt's 40-5-4). The Vols won, 13-0. TCU did do what Pitt couldn't manage to do - beat Carnegie Mellon by 8 points, but Tennessee's thundering 17-0 win over Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl knocks the Sooners out of any discussion, and the Volunteers' substantially better schedule even before that time - and plus, the SEC went 35-17 in out of conference play, the best in the country.
Had the polls been taken AFTER the bowl games or with any of the modern sense of what makes a good football team, Tennessee would have won the national championship. Duke lost to the same USC team that beat Notre Dame, and it would have come down to a ballot contest between TCU and Tennessee (as it was already).
What SHOULD have happened, of course, is either:
a) a BCS-style game between TCU and Tennessee OR
b) a four-team playoff of TCU, Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Duke.
What we likely wind up with - yet again - is Tennessee vs TCU, but in the poll era, this one stands out as a very bad anomaly. While it's true that "just because you played a tougher schedule doesn't mean you'd win head-to-head," the fact remains that TCU's rise to the top ONLY happened because in the initial poll they were rated ahead of Tennessee and never lost.
We do well to remember that in 1938, the SEC was not thought of as a powerhouse by any means. As of the end of the 1938 season, the SEC was 2-4 overall against the perceived best conference, the Big Ten. When Tennessee played Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl, it marked only the second-ever meeting between and SEC team and a Big Eight team, the first a tie between Vandy and Oklahoma in 1933. The SEC was also 14-9-4 against the SWC, so it's not as though the conference as a whole was perceived as great. But given the circumstances, Tennessee was robbed in 1938 - and believe it or not, it was about to happen again in 1939.
@selmaborntidefan I can’t tell enough how much I appreciate what you do with these write ups.
My late brother, a historian, would always say “History doesn’t change. However, our understanding of it and at the context around it does as time passes”.
Thank you for the perspective.
My late brother, a historian, would always say “History doesn’t change. However, our understanding of it and at the context around it does as time passes”.
Thank you for the perspective.
I am still trying to understand why it was a big deal for 18-22 year olds playing for Pitt to be married in 1937. I mean, my understanding people got married young in those days.
1939 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Texas A/M 10-0
Unbeaten/Untied teams:#2 Tennessee, #4 Cornell
Unbeaten teams with ties: #3 USC (7-0-2), #5 Tulane 8-0-1, #7 UCLA (6-0-4), #10 Duquesne (8-0-1)
Imagine a team that goes the entire season and does not surrender a single point. I repeat - not a single point. The team closes out their regular season with their FIFTEENTH consecutive shutout ranked #1...and falls to #2 in the final poll, losing the national championship for the second year in a row to a team from Texas.
Money talks. That's the conclusion to be made from the 1939 national championship controversy. And there is an argument that can be made in favor of Texas A/M - the Vols turned down a Cotton Bowl game against the Aggies for the richer payout of the Pasadena-based Rose Bowl. In the end, the Vols wound up with nothing by all possible routes - the voters put the Aggies on top while the Volunteers lost for the first time after 23 straight wins to USC, not scoring themselves.
But a flaw in the AP selection method became apparent, one that would take over three decades to repair: there was no formal way of voting. The first real obvious example of this flaw presented itself in 1939, when in the final poll the total number of ballots submitted by AP voters jumped from 85 to 106 - virtually all of them votes for Texas A/M - because a number of eligible voters simply didn't vote in the early days until the final poll of the season. A/M jumped Tennessee and - perhaps due to news stories that didn't spell out that the Volunteers were heading to the Rose Bowl because of the money as opposed to "they're skeered of Texas A/M," they lost the hardware.
Keep two things in mind:
1) the SEC was not very well thought of at the time, partly because the SEC openly had athletic scholarships beginning in 1935.
This fact caused a number of schools to avoid scheduling games with SEC teams under the notion that they had a level of unfair advantage. This, of course, is ludicrous and was the early manifestation of a symptom still found today in college football, "We only lost because the other team paid players." In the case of the SEC, it was the most transparent attempt to demonstrate what had been going on for years - the subsidizing of football players via money.
One of the loudest whiners of all was the legendary Amos Alonzo Stagg, a guy who held the wins record only because he coached nearly as long as folks like Coach Bryant lived. Stagg would whine about how Northwestern (his big rival locally) was subsidizing players, which was true. Stagg never bothered to mention he was doing the same thing in a more devious way, a fact the Carnegie Report of 1929 brought out into the light of day. (The more I read on Stagg and his kid, the more I think they were a group of whiny, pouty idiots whose name probably ought to be scrubbed from everything; his son, after all, begged the NCAA to add wins to his father's total just to keep Coach Bryant from passing the record. That's a historic fact).
The important point, though, is that boosters were paying players, players were being promised jobs on campus (often resulting in payment for things never actually done), and - key point - it was a way out during the economic cataclysm that affected the US starting in 1929 and not really ending until the start of WWII. One cannot judge the Vols too harshly for taking the bigger payday in Pasadena, either.
2) the need to subsidize college players began and was caused LARGELY the creation of the National Football League in 1920.
I'm NOT saying players weren't paid before then. Indeed, there were often players who had zero affiliation with schools in the early days but who showed up and played football. But the creation of a professional football league in August of 1920 changed everything. Without the modern formal setup of the draft, it became a competition to acquire players for schools as well as the pro teams - hence, players had to be paid if they were going to be paid by the NFL. The NCAA did not become a powerful oversight organization until after WW2, so who was going to stop anything?
Did the right team win the national championship?
Pittsburgh once again began the year on top after starting 3-0, but a stunning loss to Duquesne saw Pitt plummet all the way down to #18, and the voters made good to Tennessee for 1938, jumping them from #5 all the way to #1. The Vols remained there until the end of season controversy that saw them "duck" the Cotton Bowl for more money, and the late surge of AP voting that gave A/M the national championship.
Remember something else: SEC schedules were not formally set by the league office. I have not yet located the facts regarding other conferences, but the SEC did not begin micro-managing oversight of the schedules until 1970. Basically, you had to play six conference games to be a member of the SEC, although they fudged on that for rare seasons if there were legitimate reasons why the schedule couldn't be filled. This is why Alabama and Ole Miss only met once in a twenty-year span after WW2. But this also led to things like the Vols in 1939 - the SEC had three ranked teams, and Tennessee didn't play either of the other two, including #5 Tulane, who narrowly lost the Cotton Bowl to the Aggies, 14-13.
In essence, despite completing the regular season without giving up a point, the Vols sort of fell victim to the "conference superiority" argument that has benefited the SEC for many years now. TCU was a terrible team in 1939, but A/M beat them. Just like TCU in 1938, the Aggies did not play a single team that wound up ranked in the end of year poll until they narrowly beat Tulane in the bowl game - which, of course, wasn't data available for consideration in the final poll vote.
Of course, Tennessee didn't beat any powerhouses, either. Their 21-0 win over Alabama moved them up to #1 based largely on Alabama's reputation of the previous five years, but it wasn't enough - Alabama wasn't very good in 1939, losing to all three ranked SEC teams and tying Kentucky.
In the end, it's almost impossible to argue with the Aggies. What SHOULD have happened was a Texas A/M vs Tennessee game for the championship......but can you imagine the outrage nowadays if Tennessee had won that game after losing the poll to the Aggies?
Tennessee might have been the best team or might not have - but the selection of the Aggies was by no means necessarily incorrect, either.
USC claiming a national championship for that year, though, with two ties is next-level stupid. Yeah, Dickinson chose them.....just as Dickinson chose Notre Dame the year before (which shows how little credibility it had).
National champion: Texas A/M 10-0
Unbeaten/Untied teams:#2 Tennessee, #4 Cornell
Unbeaten teams with ties: #3 USC (7-0-2), #5 Tulane 8-0-1, #7 UCLA (6-0-4), #10 Duquesne (8-0-1)
Imagine a team that goes the entire season and does not surrender a single point. I repeat - not a single point. The team closes out their regular season with their FIFTEENTH consecutive shutout ranked #1...and falls to #2 in the final poll, losing the national championship for the second year in a row to a team from Texas.
Money talks. That's the conclusion to be made from the 1939 national championship controversy. And there is an argument that can be made in favor of Texas A/M - the Vols turned down a Cotton Bowl game against the Aggies for the richer payout of the Pasadena-based Rose Bowl. In the end, the Vols wound up with nothing by all possible routes - the voters put the Aggies on top while the Volunteers lost for the first time after 23 straight wins to USC, not scoring themselves.
But a flaw in the AP selection method became apparent, one that would take over three decades to repair: there was no formal way of voting. The first real obvious example of this flaw presented itself in 1939, when in the final poll the total number of ballots submitted by AP voters jumped from 85 to 106 - virtually all of them votes for Texas A/M - because a number of eligible voters simply didn't vote in the early days until the final poll of the season. A/M jumped Tennessee and - perhaps due to news stories that didn't spell out that the Volunteers were heading to the Rose Bowl because of the money as opposed to "they're skeered of Texas A/M," they lost the hardware.
Keep two things in mind:
1) the SEC was not very well thought of at the time, partly because the SEC openly had athletic scholarships beginning in 1935.
This fact caused a number of schools to avoid scheduling games with SEC teams under the notion that they had a level of unfair advantage. This, of course, is ludicrous and was the early manifestation of a symptom still found today in college football, "We only lost because the other team paid players." In the case of the SEC, it was the most transparent attempt to demonstrate what had been going on for years - the subsidizing of football players via money.
One of the loudest whiners of all was the legendary Amos Alonzo Stagg, a guy who held the wins record only because he coached nearly as long as folks like Coach Bryant lived. Stagg would whine about how Northwestern (his big rival locally) was subsidizing players, which was true. Stagg never bothered to mention he was doing the same thing in a more devious way, a fact the Carnegie Report of 1929 brought out into the light of day. (The more I read on Stagg and his kid, the more I think they were a group of whiny, pouty idiots whose name probably ought to be scrubbed from everything; his son, after all, begged the NCAA to add wins to his father's total just to keep Coach Bryant from passing the record. That's a historic fact).
The important point, though, is that boosters were paying players, players were being promised jobs on campus (often resulting in payment for things never actually done), and - key point - it was a way out during the economic cataclysm that affected the US starting in 1929 and not really ending until the start of WWII. One cannot judge the Vols too harshly for taking the bigger payday in Pasadena, either.
2) the need to subsidize college players began and was caused LARGELY the creation of the National Football League in 1920.
I'm NOT saying players weren't paid before then. Indeed, there were often players who had zero affiliation with schools in the early days but who showed up and played football. But the creation of a professional football league in August of 1920 changed everything. Without the modern formal setup of the draft, it became a competition to acquire players for schools as well as the pro teams - hence, players had to be paid if they were going to be paid by the NFL. The NCAA did not become a powerful oversight organization until after WW2, so who was going to stop anything?
Did the right team win the national championship?
Pittsburgh once again began the year on top after starting 3-0, but a stunning loss to Duquesne saw Pitt plummet all the way down to #18, and the voters made good to Tennessee for 1938, jumping them from #5 all the way to #1. The Vols remained there until the end of season controversy that saw them "duck" the Cotton Bowl for more money, and the late surge of AP voting that gave A/M the national championship.
Remember something else: SEC schedules were not formally set by the league office. I have not yet located the facts regarding other conferences, but the SEC did not begin micro-managing oversight of the schedules until 1970. Basically, you had to play six conference games to be a member of the SEC, although they fudged on that for rare seasons if there were legitimate reasons why the schedule couldn't be filled. This is why Alabama and Ole Miss only met once in a twenty-year span after WW2. But this also led to things like the Vols in 1939 - the SEC had three ranked teams, and Tennessee didn't play either of the other two, including #5 Tulane, who narrowly lost the Cotton Bowl to the Aggies, 14-13.
In essence, despite completing the regular season without giving up a point, the Vols sort of fell victim to the "conference superiority" argument that has benefited the SEC for many years now. TCU was a terrible team in 1939, but A/M beat them. Just like TCU in 1938, the Aggies did not play a single team that wound up ranked in the end of year poll until they narrowly beat Tulane in the bowl game - which, of course, wasn't data available for consideration in the final poll vote.
Of course, Tennessee didn't beat any powerhouses, either. Their 21-0 win over Alabama moved them up to #1 based largely on Alabama's reputation of the previous five years, but it wasn't enough - Alabama wasn't very good in 1939, losing to all three ranked SEC teams and tying Kentucky.
In the end, it's almost impossible to argue with the Aggies. What SHOULD have happened was a Texas A/M vs Tennessee game for the championship......but can you imagine the outrage nowadays if Tennessee had won that game after losing the poll to the Aggies?
Tennessee might have been the best team or might not have - but the selection of the Aggies was by no means necessarily incorrect, either.
USC claiming a national championship for that year, though, with two ties is next-level stupid. Yeah, Dickinson chose them.....just as Dickinson chose Notre Dame the year before (which shows how little credibility it had).
It was just the time - and the fact they were subsidizing folks DURING THE GREAT DEPRESSION was the big deal.
Remember - and I don't want this to go off the rails - Nelson Rockefeller probably lost the Presidential nomination in 1964 because he was divorced (the child of his new wife gave birth the weekend prior to that year's California primary, and the polling showed a massive overnight switch from Rockefeller to Goldwater).
It was a scandal of the highest order when it came out Tony Dorsett (at Pitt at the time) had an out of wedlock kid; I mean, a bunch of the players at UA do that nowadays.
It was just the time and societal expectation.
Let me make another point that is VERY important in evaluating this.
Back prior to the early 1960s, the points were figured differently. Although there was a TOP TWENTY ranking, points were ONLY AWARDED for teams ranked in the top ten, using the descending scale (10 points for 1st place vote, 9 for second, etc). The way you got a top 20 was the leftover points totals filled out the rest of the ranking. This is how, for example, a team might get ONE second place vote, nobody else gave them anything, but they might be, say, 18th in the country.
The situation is evolving.
Back prior to the early 1960s, the points were figured differently. Although there was a TOP TWENTY ranking, points were ONLY AWARDED for teams ranked in the top ten, using the descending scale (10 points for 1st place vote, 9 for second, etc). The way you got a top 20 was the leftover points totals filled out the rest of the ranking. This is how, for example, a team might get ONE second place vote, nobody else gave them anything, but they might be, say, 18th in the country.
The situation is evolving.
1940 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Minnesota 8-0
Unbeaten/Untied teams:#2 Stanford 10-0, #4 Tennessee 10-0,#5 Boston College 10-0, #17 Hardin-Simmons 8-0, #19 Lafayette 9-0
Unbeaten teams with ties: #9 Mississippi State 8-0-1
I'll pause long enough for readers of this post to get over their absolute shock at an undefeated Mississippi State...........
1) Stop me if you've heard this one....
Tennessee completes an undefeated regular season (like 1938 and 1939).
They shut out eight opponents (like 1938....and sorta like 1939 when they shut out TEN).
They don't win the national championship (like 1938 and 1939).
They lose the bowl game to the team ranked one spot below them (like 1939).
2) And stop me if you've heard this one....
Four unbeaten teams in the top five. And the one team with a loss has lost to the #1 team by one point on the road, lending credence to conference strength as well as "they're about equal with the best team."
3) But did the right team win the national championship?
In a word, yes. But this will involve some details.
Minnesota in 1940 got the same blank check of "they're good" that Alabama got in the 70s, Oklahoma and Miami in the 80s, Nebraska and FSU in the 90s, USC in the 00s, and Alabama since 2009. The Big Ten put three teams in the top eight in 1940:
a) unbeaten Minnesota
b) one-loss Michigan, who lost by one point to Minnesota in the Little Brown Jug
c) two-loss Northwestern - and you get only two guesses who beat them......
Minnesota not only beat these two teams in the top 8, they also knocked off #7 Nebraska (more on this in a moment). In other words, Minnesota knocked off four of the teams in the seven spots 2 through 8, including the Big Six champions. They also beat PCC runner-up Washington, who was ranked #10. All told, the Minnesota Golden Gophers played and beat FIVE of the top ten teams in America as perceived by the sportswriters who couldn't watch the games on the new invention of television.
Stanford - then known as the Indians if you wish to find some offense in that non-PC usage back in the day - beat Washington by 10 (Minnesota beat the Huskies by 5) and then beat Nebraska in the Rose Bowl by 8 (Minnesota by 6). Of course, this last game wasn't taken into account in the final rankings, so why did Minnesota prevail? In a word, it was multiple perceptions that won the day.
Tennessee had looked awesome in 1938, but they got hosed. In 1939, they looked even more awesome - and then taken out of the protective lair of the Southern US, they folded against USC. The expectation - proven correct - was they would do so again, and they did. In general, the voters did not accept that the Southern teams were that good and given their records against non-Southern teams (sans Alabama), why would they? And yet again, Tennessee and Mississippi State both went undefeated and didn't face each other.
Boston College had the misfortune of being viewed as both below and Ivy League school AND not being that prestigious football-wise in the first place. But - and this is a key point - BC routed Auburn, 33-7, at Fenway Park on November 23. Auburn turned out to be MSU's tie, which again gave wide perception to the idea that the Southern teams weren't really that good. BC, after all, blew out a team that MSU couldn't beat and then for good measure (after the vote) went down to Tulane and scored 19 points on a team that had administered a bunch of shutouts once again. Hardin-Simmons and Lafayette weren't taken seriously and should not have been.
At this point, it came down to a popularity contest between Minnesota and Stanford. We should not think Stanford was by any means a "bad" team, but why did Minnesota prevail?
1) Minnesota prevailed largely because the non-Minnesota first-place votes were distributed among several other teams.
The Gophers had 65 first-place votes while Stanford had 44. But 24 other votes were distributed among Michigan (5), Tennessee (10), BC (7), Texas A/M (1), and - believe it or not - Mississippi St (1). Had Stanford collared all of the other votes that went to other teams, they would have netted 68 first-place votes. That would NOT have guaranteed them a championship since the key point then would have been 2nd place votes, but the diffusion of support hurt them badly - and it's hard to argue any of the teams who got votes didn't deserve them.
2) This was (in part) the birth of the idea of "East Coast bias."
It's damn near impossible to get someone who lives on the East Coast to even acknowledge the existence - just as it's damn near impossible to get someone who lives on the West Coast to admit that while it DOES exist, it's not in and of itself a decisive factor. USC, after all, won the popularity contest in 2003, and they're on the West Coast. But it IS real and it DOES exist. It existed back then not so much because people hated the West Coast as because most of the major newspapers and outlets were in the East, and the Western migration that turned California into the nation's most populous state hadn't really gotten under way yet.
Stanford was hurt by this reality, but it's not the sole reason they lost. Remember, there was no TV back then other than in a few
3) The largest role in addition to the perceptions of both Minnesota and the Big Ten may have been the perception of Stanford Coach Clark Shaugnessy.
Shaugnessy is one of the great names of all-time in college football. He is called "the father of the T formation," having modified a previous variation of the set. He is also credited as the man who "invented the forward pass" and a great innovator. While the idea he "invented" those ideas may be far-fetched, one might view Shaugnessy as noting what might work and then exploiting it.
Shaugnessy succeeded the legendary Amos Alonzo Stagg at the University of Chicago, right around the time Indiana Jones was on the academic staff there. Chicago played a Big Ten scheduled every year back then and Shaugnessy left the Second City after seven seasons where he lost 2/3 of his games and 83% of his Big Ten contests. In his last year at Chicago, Shaugnessy lost games to Harvard (61-0), Michigan (85-0), and Ohio St (61-0) that suggested he wasn't cut out for the powerhouse conference.
And then he leaves and goes West......and suddenly goes undefeated. It's not difficult to see - fairly or unfairly - how perceptions might be that he was in a lower league of football. Shaugnessy coached at six schools, and he had a losing record at three of them. He actually succeeded some guy named Paul Bryant at Maryland, but his overall college coaching record was a pedestrian 150-117-1, and his Stanford team in 1940 was his only team ever to go unbeaten and untied.
Shaugnessy can't win in the Big Ten, goes West, and goes undefeated simply could not help Stanford.
By the scoreboard, one can argue that Stanford should have won. But already held perceptions were already determining who wins the vote - and this will get worse as the years go by.
National champion: Minnesota 8-0
Unbeaten/Untied teams:#2 Stanford 10-0, #4 Tennessee 10-0,#5 Boston College 10-0, #17 Hardin-Simmons 8-0, #19 Lafayette 9-0
Unbeaten teams with ties: #9 Mississippi State 8-0-1
I'll pause long enough for readers of this post to get over their absolute shock at an undefeated Mississippi State...........
1) Stop me if you've heard this one....
Tennessee completes an undefeated regular season (like 1938 and 1939).
They shut out eight opponents (like 1938....and sorta like 1939 when they shut out TEN).
They don't win the national championship (like 1938 and 1939).
They lose the bowl game to the team ranked one spot below them (like 1939).
2) And stop me if you've heard this one....
Four unbeaten teams in the top five. And the one team with a loss has lost to the #1 team by one point on the road, lending credence to conference strength as well as "they're about equal with the best team."
3) But did the right team win the national championship?
In a word, yes. But this will involve some details.
Minnesota in 1940 got the same blank check of "they're good" that Alabama got in the 70s, Oklahoma and Miami in the 80s, Nebraska and FSU in the 90s, USC in the 00s, and Alabama since 2009. The Big Ten put three teams in the top eight in 1940:
a) unbeaten Minnesota
b) one-loss Michigan, who lost by one point to Minnesota in the Little Brown Jug
c) two-loss Northwestern - and you get only two guesses who beat them......
Minnesota not only beat these two teams in the top 8, they also knocked off #7 Nebraska (more on this in a moment). In other words, Minnesota knocked off four of the teams in the seven spots 2 through 8, including the Big Six champions. They also beat PCC runner-up Washington, who was ranked #10. All told, the Minnesota Golden Gophers played and beat FIVE of the top ten teams in America as perceived by the sportswriters who couldn't watch the games on the new invention of television.
Stanford - then known as the Indians if you wish to find some offense in that non-PC usage back in the day - beat Washington by 10 (Minnesota beat the Huskies by 5) and then beat Nebraska in the Rose Bowl by 8 (Minnesota by 6). Of course, this last game wasn't taken into account in the final rankings, so why did Minnesota prevail? In a word, it was multiple perceptions that won the day.
Tennessee had looked awesome in 1938, but they got hosed. In 1939, they looked even more awesome - and then taken out of the protective lair of the Southern US, they folded against USC. The expectation - proven correct - was they would do so again, and they did. In general, the voters did not accept that the Southern teams were that good and given their records against non-Southern teams (sans Alabama), why would they? And yet again, Tennessee and Mississippi State both went undefeated and didn't face each other.
Boston College had the misfortune of being viewed as both below and Ivy League school AND not being that prestigious football-wise in the first place. But - and this is a key point - BC routed Auburn, 33-7, at Fenway Park on November 23. Auburn turned out to be MSU's tie, which again gave wide perception to the idea that the Southern teams weren't really that good. BC, after all, blew out a team that MSU couldn't beat and then for good measure (after the vote) went down to Tulane and scored 19 points on a team that had administered a bunch of shutouts once again. Hardin-Simmons and Lafayette weren't taken seriously and should not have been.
At this point, it came down to a popularity contest between Minnesota and Stanford. We should not think Stanford was by any means a "bad" team, but why did Minnesota prevail?
1) Minnesota prevailed largely because the non-Minnesota first-place votes were distributed among several other teams.
The Gophers had 65 first-place votes while Stanford had 44. But 24 other votes were distributed among Michigan (5), Tennessee (10), BC (7), Texas A/M (1), and - believe it or not - Mississippi St (1). Had Stanford collared all of the other votes that went to other teams, they would have netted 68 first-place votes. That would NOT have guaranteed them a championship since the key point then would have been 2nd place votes, but the diffusion of support hurt them badly - and it's hard to argue any of the teams who got votes didn't deserve them.
2) This was (in part) the birth of the idea of "East Coast bias."
It's damn near impossible to get someone who lives on the East Coast to even acknowledge the existence - just as it's damn near impossible to get someone who lives on the West Coast to admit that while it DOES exist, it's not in and of itself a decisive factor. USC, after all, won the popularity contest in 2003, and they're on the West Coast. But it IS real and it DOES exist. It existed back then not so much because people hated the West Coast as because most of the major newspapers and outlets were in the East, and the Western migration that turned California into the nation's most populous state hadn't really gotten under way yet.
Stanford was hurt by this reality, but it's not the sole reason they lost. Remember, there was no TV back then other than in a few
3) The largest role in addition to the perceptions of both Minnesota and the Big Ten may have been the perception of Stanford Coach Clark Shaugnessy.
Shaugnessy is one of the great names of all-time in college football. He is called "the father of the T formation," having modified a previous variation of the set. He is also credited as the man who "invented the forward pass" and a great innovator. While the idea he "invented" those ideas may be far-fetched, one might view Shaugnessy as noting what might work and then exploiting it.
Shaugnessy succeeded the legendary Amos Alonzo Stagg at the University of Chicago, right around the time Indiana Jones was on the academic staff there. Chicago played a Big Ten scheduled every year back then and Shaugnessy left the Second City after seven seasons where he lost 2/3 of his games and 83% of his Big Ten contests. In his last year at Chicago, Shaugnessy lost games to Harvard (61-0), Michigan (85-0), and Ohio St (61-0) that suggested he wasn't cut out for the powerhouse conference.
And then he leaves and goes West......and suddenly goes undefeated. It's not difficult to see - fairly or unfairly - how perceptions might be that he was in a lower league of football. Shaugnessy coached at six schools, and he had a losing record at three of them. He actually succeeded some guy named Paul Bryant at Maryland, but his overall college coaching record was a pedestrian 150-117-1, and his Stanford team in 1940 was his only team ever to go unbeaten and untied.
Shaugnessy can't win in the Big Ten, goes West, and goes undefeated simply could not help Stanford.
By the scoreboard, one can argue that Stanford should have won. But already held perceptions were already determining who wins the vote - and this will get worse as the years go by.
1941 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Minnesota 8-0
Unbeaten/Untied teams:#2 Duke 9-0, #8 Duquesne 8-0
Unbeaten teams with ties: #3 Notre Dame 8-0-1
Did the right team win the national championship?
The defending champions went undefeated. Not much else needs to be said.
We need to admit something else - even in the 1940s, the ASSUMPTIONS writers made of who would win were more often than not correct. Twice they bypassed Tennessee - and both times the Vols lost the bowl game. In 1941, Duke got 9 1/2 first-place votes and not much respect...and lost the Rose Bowl to Oregon State on their home field in Durham when the game was moved after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
National champion: Minnesota 8-0
Unbeaten/Untied teams:#2 Duke 9-0, #8 Duquesne 8-0
Unbeaten teams with ties: #3 Notre Dame 8-0-1
Did the right team win the national championship?
The defending champions went undefeated. Not much else needs to be said.
We need to admit something else - even in the 1940s, the ASSUMPTIONS writers made of who would win were more often than not correct. Twice they bypassed Tennessee - and both times the Vols lost the bowl game. In 1941, Duke got 9 1/2 first-place votes and not much respect...and lost the Rose Bowl to Oregon State on their home field in Durham when the game was moved after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
1942 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Ohio State 9-1
Undefeated teams: #4 Tulsa
Did the right team win the national championship?
It's hard to argue with Ohio State. The entire issue, in fact, comes down to this question: should #3 Wisconsin (8-1-1) be ranked AHEAD of Ohio State....a team they beat at Camp Randall, 17-7....or BEHIND Ohio State? That's really the question. Wisconsin had a tie in their opener against a Top 10 Notre Dame team. Who gets the nod? Remember, in 1942, you had teams decimated by college age players off saving civilization, and the Big Ten was the premiere conference in the land (and the one where most of the sportswriters went to school in the pre-TV era).
Ohio State got a mulligan - not because they were Ohio State but because of an infamous incident that occurred on the trip to Madison, where fully half of the Ohio State players contracted an intestinal disorder from contaminated drinking water. The train the Buckeyes used had a water tank that had not been serviced in years....and it's not hard to figure out the rest. Keep in mind that Wisconsin had one of the most exciting players of the time in Elroy Hirsch, who beat OSU or at least the half of the team that could take the field.
On October 31, 1942, no less than SIX UNDEFEATED TEAMS went down, leaving four standing. So how did Ohio St win the national title - back at a time they weren't the reputation they have nowadays?
1) They had the best loss, Georgia had the worst.
Ohio St lost to #2 Wisconsin ON THE ROAD while affected with an intestinal disorder. Georgia moved to number one, and the very next week Wisconsin suffered a typical "Post Big Game Letdown" and lost to 6-4 Iowa, 6-0, also on the road. Georgia lost a "home" game in Columbus, Georgia to Auburn, a good team, but by 14 points. Note that UGA and Auburn played in Columbus for the next 15 or so years, too.
2) Big Ten reputation salvaged the day
Again, what the SEC benefits from NOW, the Big Ten benefited from in the 1940s. Minnesota had won 3 of the previous six national titles. No, Ohio State didn't beat Minnesota. But the did beat USC (again not a good team but it was an early season game) and Pitt (who was beginning their decline but had won the title five years earlier). They played in a good rep conference and beat a well-perceived schedule. And when Wisconsin lost to Iowa, the Buckeyes were conference champions. They added the top spot in the nation because Georgia lost.
One CAN argue in favor of Wisconsin, but it's not Ohio State's fault the Badgers lost to Iowa. It was the TWO imperfections that cost Wisconsin...just like it was TWO imperfections that cost the Buckeyes in 2017. What goes around really does come around.
3) And so did some championship chaos....
What would a national championship be without a tad bit of chaos? Well, Ohio State was sitting at #3 with only Michigan remaining. Boston College, building on last year's reputation, was undefeated and ranked #1. Georgia Tech of the SEC was undefeated and #2. Naturally, both lost, BC to Holy Cross by the insane score of 55-12 and Georgia Tech to Georgia in a 34-0 pole-axing that Furman Bisher probably blamed on Navy enlistee Paul Bryant at the time. There's a good chance that had Tech been #1, the Bulldogs would have claimed the national title.
Georgia DID play a slightly tougher schedule than Ohio State did. But it's hard to argue with OSU, too. Their loss can be written off as a case of a virus changing the course of a season....
In the modern era, of course, there'd be a huge controversy. In the BCS era, Ohio State and Georgia would play and Wisconsin would cry like Miami did in 2000 and Texas in 2008. In the four-team playoff era, Tulsa would likely be excluded and go "full UCF."
1943 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Notre Dame 9-1
Undefeated teams: #4 Purdue 9-0, #12 Washington 4-0, #17 Bainbridge Naval 7-0, #18 Colorado College 7-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #15 Tulsa 6-0-1
Did the right team win the national championship?
It's tempting to say, "Well, the rules don't apply to Notre Dame." And Purdue was the team playing in the perceived tough conference, the B1G. Purdue fans, in fact, refer to this as "our stolen national title," but in all honesty, who cares?
All you really have to know is this - Purdue got through the Big Ten without playing national #3 Michigan or #9 Northwestern. In fact, Notre Dame PLAYED A TOUGHER BIG TEN SCHEDULE THAN BIG TEN CHAMPION PURDUE DID!!!!
Notre Dame clobbered Michigan, 35-12. It was Michigan's only loss on the year. The Irish clobbered SEC champion Georgia Tech, 55-13, although the SEC only fielded five teams that year. They beat the same Wisconsin team by 50 that Purdue beat by 32 in the same venue. Oh, and they beat #9 Northwestern by 19 points. And Notre Dame was the only team to beat Navy - and the service academies you might recall were really good during the war.
In other words, Notre Dame played a tougher Big Ten slate than Purdue did. The end.
National champion: Notre Dame 9-1
Undefeated teams: #4 Purdue 9-0, #12 Washington 4-0, #17 Bainbridge Naval 7-0, #18 Colorado College 7-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #15 Tulsa 6-0-1
Did the right team win the national championship?
It's tempting to say, "Well, the rules don't apply to Notre Dame." And Purdue was the team playing in the perceived tough conference, the B1G. Purdue fans, in fact, refer to this as "our stolen national title," but in all honesty, who cares?
All you really have to know is this - Purdue got through the Big Ten without playing national #3 Michigan or #9 Northwestern. In fact, Notre Dame PLAYED A TOUGHER BIG TEN SCHEDULE THAN BIG TEN CHAMPION PURDUE DID!!!!
Notre Dame clobbered Michigan, 35-12. It was Michigan's only loss on the year. The Irish clobbered SEC champion Georgia Tech, 55-13, although the SEC only fielded five teams that year. They beat the same Wisconsin team by 50 that Purdue beat by 32 in the same venue. Oh, and they beat #9 Northwestern by 19 points. And Notre Dame was the only team to beat Navy - and the service academies you might recall were really good during the war.
In other words, Notre Dame played a tougher Big Ten slate than Purdue did. The end.
1944 AP FINAL POLL
National Champion: Army
Undefeated teams: #2 Ohio St 9-0, #3 Randolph Field 9-0, #5 Bainbridge Naval 10-0, #13 Norman Pre-Flight 6-0, #19 Fort Pierce Naval 8-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #7 USC 7-0-2, #10 March Field 7-0-2, #12 Tennessee 7-0-1
1) Who ever thought they'd see the day when a service academy beat out a Blue Blood?
Let's get this out of the way: Ohio St had a VERY good team in 1944, much of the 1942 team coming back without dysentery, heh heh. They had the Heisman Trophy winner, Les Horvath. They played in the conference with the big rep. They went 9-0. The only team that the Bucks beat by less than two scores was Michigan, their rivals.
And then there's Army, who apparently were the 1944 version of the 1995 Nebraska Cornhuskers. No team was closer than 16 points, and Army had six Hall of Famers on their team so obviously an all-time great team.
Not really. Ever notice the service academy dominance ONLY happened during WW2? There's a reason for that - they had the same athletes they always had while everyone else was depleted, some schools (like Alabama) enough to not field teams.
The fact is this: Army played the tougher schedule and won by more points. They weren't going to play any kind of championship game in 1944, and Ohio State only played one road game while Army only left New York to play Navy in Philly. Travel restrictions affected everyone.
2) Did the right team win the championship?
Probably. It was depleted athleticism and so Army probably was the best top to bottom team. It is to Ohio State's credit that (unlike say Alabama in 1941) they don't "recognize" this year as a national title year.
In a year like 1944 with civilization at stake, there were far more important questions than who was the college football national champion.
National Champion: Army
Undefeated teams: #2 Ohio St 9-0, #3 Randolph Field 9-0, #5 Bainbridge Naval 10-0, #13 Norman Pre-Flight 6-0, #19 Fort Pierce Naval 8-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #7 USC 7-0-2, #10 March Field 7-0-2, #12 Tennessee 7-0-1
1) Who ever thought they'd see the day when a service academy beat out a Blue Blood?
Let's get this out of the way: Ohio St had a VERY good team in 1944, much of the 1942 team coming back without dysentery, heh heh. They had the Heisman Trophy winner, Les Horvath. They played in the conference with the big rep. They went 9-0. The only team that the Bucks beat by less than two scores was Michigan, their rivals.
And then there's Army, who apparently were the 1944 version of the 1995 Nebraska Cornhuskers. No team was closer than 16 points, and Army had six Hall of Famers on their team so obviously an all-time great team.
Not really. Ever notice the service academy dominance ONLY happened during WW2? There's a reason for that - they had the same athletes they always had while everyone else was depleted, some schools (like Alabama) enough to not field teams.
The fact is this: Army played the tougher schedule and won by more points. They weren't going to play any kind of championship game in 1944, and Ohio State only played one road game while Army only left New York to play Navy in Philly. Travel restrictions affected everyone.
2) Did the right team win the championship?
Probably. It was depleted athleticism and so Army probably was the best top to bottom team. It is to Ohio State's credit that (unlike say Alabama in 1941) they don't "recognize" this year as a national title year.
In a year like 1944 with civilization at stake, there were far more important questions than who was the college football national champion.
1945 AP FINAL POLL
National Champion: Army
Undefeated teams: #2 Alabama 9-0,#5 Oklahoma A/M 8-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #4 Indiana 9-0-1
1) Who would have ever thought they'd see the day when a service academy beat out a Blue Blood?
1945 felt a lot like 1944, the center of discontent shifting from Columbus to Tuscaloosa.
The war ended on September 2, 1945 (coincidentally the same day American involvement in Indochina aka Vietnam began), so there was one more season of depleted athletes, and Army benefited. Running their unbeaten string to 18 in a row (it would reach 25 before a tie with Notre Dame in 1946), Army went through another year undefeated and mostly unchallenged.
What is often missed, though, is how unchallenged Alabama was. No team was closer than 14 points and most were next-level blowouts.
2) Did the right team win the national championship?
Who knows? Army was a high-scoring juggernaut at the time, and who's to say how much a sort of loyalty to "the boys who just won the war" might have played in the final vote? There were 116 votes in the final AP poll - Army got 115 first-place ballots - so it wasn't even close.
There's no way to know who would win between the two, but Army gets the nod for another reason: they are an unbeaten defending national champion, not that this helped Alabama in 1966.
National Champion: Army
Undefeated teams: #2 Alabama 9-0,#5 Oklahoma A/M 8-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #4 Indiana 9-0-1
1) Who would have ever thought they'd see the day when a service academy beat out a Blue Blood?
1945 felt a lot like 1944, the center of discontent shifting from Columbus to Tuscaloosa.
The war ended on September 2, 1945 (coincidentally the same day American involvement in Indochina aka Vietnam began), so there was one more season of depleted athletes, and Army benefited. Running their unbeaten string to 18 in a row (it would reach 25 before a tie with Notre Dame in 1946), Army went through another year undefeated and mostly unchallenged.
What is often missed, though, is how unchallenged Alabama was. No team was closer than 14 points and most were next-level blowouts.
2) Did the right team win the national championship?
Who knows? Army was a high-scoring juggernaut at the time, and who's to say how much a sort of loyalty to "the boys who just won the war" might have played in the final vote? There were 116 votes in the final AP poll - Army got 115 first-place ballots - so it wasn't even close.
There's no way to know who would win between the two, but Army gets the nod for another reason: they are an unbeaten defending national champion, not that this helped Alabama in 1966.
What makes me laugh is when people act like Alabama is the only team to claim a title when they lost a bowl game (Ap and/or UPI). Notre dame for the longest time didn’t even play In a bowl game and lost their last game in 1943 and tied their last game in 1966. but apparently that’s ok because...reasons.
Barn fans are famous for pointing out factoids that result from convenient elimination of inconvenient periods of history.
That’s why I don’t talk to them about football.
One of my favorites goes like this:
"Since 1993, Auburn has 3 undefeated seasons and Alabama has only two whereas Alabama has three probations and Auburn has none."
Uh, yeah. Just pretend the Bryant Era never happened. Or that Ray Perkins was actually 2-2 against Pat Dye.
Yes and Mississippi State went .500 against Alabama from 1996-2007, right?
I love the guys who went from "AP polls are popularity contests, there are no national champions" to "we won the national championship!"
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