Yeah I have heard the “Since 1993 factoid” let’s just leave out that Alabama went undefeated in 1992.
An Evaluation of National Championships 1936-2013
- Thread starter selmaborntidefan
- Start date
1946 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Notre Dame 9-0-1
Undefeated teams:#3 Georgia 10-0, #4 UCLA 10-0, #19 Delaware 9-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #2 Army 9-0-1
In 1940, the AP released perhaps it's most defensible poll in history, a poll where with one minor quibble, they actually ranked teams higher if they won head-to-head contests. The decline began in 1942. The WW2 years were difficult to rate so let's not be too harsh, but starting in 1946, the AP pollsters began making a series of appalling ratings that would - well, half a century later anyway - help push the game towards the BCS.
1) Remember that time a team lost a chance at a three-peat because Notre Dame won a national title with a tie in a 1 vs 2 game?
Yeah, welcome to1966 1946.
The war was over and two things took place:
a) a baby boom among the returning soldiers
b) college attendance increasing massively
It was this latter, of course, that helped load the rosters of college football teams, although it would take a couple of years to cycle through. Two-time defending champion Army was back for a three-peat, although that term wouldn't exist for over four more decades. Texas began the year #1 and in typical Longhorn fashion lost to Rice, pushing Army to the top spot. Scheduled to play the improving Notre Dame, the 1946 Army-Notre Dame contest was AT THAT TIME the most hyped college football game in history, so much so they invited 71-year old Verne Lundquist to call it. And naturally, the game ended in a tie, although Ara Parseghian was in the military.
To be fair, nobody intended for this game to end in a tie. The Irish outgained Army, 225-190, but they also turned the ball over seven times. When the game ended in a tie, Army stayed #1, no big deal. Until they barely scraped by arch rival Navy, who was 1-8. That lackluster win gave the voters the impetus to vote for Notre Dame as #1, and the Irish won the title and prevented the three-peat.
2) Oklahoma is about to become a national power thanks to buying players from Tulsa.
And keep buying them for years!!
OK (see what I did there?), let's be fair - Oklahoma was not even close to the only school buying military veterans from the good Tulsa teams of a few years earlier. A story in "The Saturday Evening Post" (and we all know their commitment to accuracy) exposed the racket of the eight players OU got from Tulsa, all WW2 veterans. By the standards of the time, it was a yuge scandal.
3) Poor Jawja......
OK, tell me what these teams have in common:
1936 LSU
1936 Alabama
1937 Alabama
1938 Tennessee
1939 Tennessee
1940 Tennessee
1945 Alabama
1946 Georgia
The correct answer is, "Those teams all went undefeated but didn't win the national championship." The top two had ties, but the other teams were all unbeaten at the time of the poll. That's not to say that the wrong team won the title - but when one conference is getting victimized almost every year and it's different teams, it gives rise to accusations of bias. And while the earlier cases sans 1939 Tennessee - who as I remind you didn't even give up a single point - are debatable, both 45 UA and 46 UGA present LEGITIMATE cases for the national championship.
The SEC of the 1940s, of course, was not the SEC of the 80s or 90s and beyond. But how is it possible that the same conference can come up short year after year after year?
4) But did the right team win the national championship?
In a word, probably. PROBABLY.
A number of sportswriters, some who no doubt had votes, looked at the scores and decided Army's dominance was largely due to getting some strapping in shape men prepping for war while other programs were depleted beyond description. But they noticed an obvious issue:
Army failed in 12 straight tries against Notre Dame, ten of them losses.
Players went to war while Army built strength (and won two Heisman Trophies).
Army not only beats Notre Dame, they baste them - 59-0 and 48-0 - and the moment the soldiers return to college, Army can't beat the Irish.
And keep this in mind - despite high-powered offenses in context of the time, Army started with no fewer than SIX possessions inside the Notre Dame 33-yard line in their game...and got 0 points. They didn't even particularly threaten the goal line. This fact alone came close to proving the hypothesis that Army wasn't fielding powerful offenses, the opposition was fielding horrific defenses.
It's sort of bizarre - Notre Dame benefited from a two-pronged defense:
a) Army wasn't really that good
b) But wait! Notre Dame ended the Army winning streak!
There IS a case to be made for Georgia - the Bulldogs played the toughest schedule of the three unbeaten contenders. Of course, a team CAN play the toughest schedule but NOT be the best team, that's true. And then there's the strange case of UCLA.
We can dismiss UCLA for no other reason than they were sandblasted by Illinois in the Rose Bowl, 45-14. That, too, has a tad bit of intrigue behind it because the Rose Bowl WANTED to invite Army. Given the circumstances, that might possibly have altered everything as early as 1946. What if Army had lost a vote to the Irish and then gone and blown Illinois off the field? Would there not have been some level of outcry of the injustice? But there are two reasons Army didn't go to the Rose Bowl:
a) the school didn't want to go, largely preferring to remain an academic institution
b) the Big Ten (then a 9-team conference called the Western Conference, showing they started terrible at geography long before they couldn't count) approved a five-year Rose Bowl contract to face the Pacific Coast Conference in the Rose Bowl via a 7-2 vote, with Minnesota and Wisconsin opposing.
The Western Conference did this IN PART to step into the picture and sort of nudge Army out of the way. Conference politics is nothing new. WHY was this a big deal? Because the 1947 Rose Bowl was going to be the first one ever broadcast on television, albeit locally. The five-year contract bought them time to get the game telecast nationally, which would happen with the 1952 game - with Alabama grad and Yankees announcer Mel Allen doing the honors in a Stanford vs Illinois tilt.
But UCLA was viewed largely as UCF was in 2017 and for good reason - they played nobody of note and their big names like Santa Clara and Nebraska weren't all that good in 1946. Notre Dame beat Illinois who bombed UCLA, which wasn't a result available at the time of the final poll.
Notre Dame won largely on the basis of an unbeaten record, prior reputation, an inflated reputation for Army, and more anti-Southern bias. The Irish were now 22 years removed from the invoking of the term "The Four Horsemen" (Tully, Arn, Flair, whoever) and 15 years past Knute Rockne. This was the second generation, and Irish eyes were smiling as the sport was about to enter a controversial era of recounts and reactions to integration.
National champion: Notre Dame 9-0-1
Undefeated teams:#3 Georgia 10-0, #4 UCLA 10-0, #19 Delaware 9-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #2 Army 9-0-1
In 1940, the AP released perhaps it's most defensible poll in history, a poll where with one minor quibble, they actually ranked teams higher if they won head-to-head contests. The decline began in 1942. The WW2 years were difficult to rate so let's not be too harsh, but starting in 1946, the AP pollsters began making a series of appalling ratings that would - well, half a century later anyway - help push the game towards the BCS.
1) Remember that time a team lost a chance at a three-peat because Notre Dame won a national title with a tie in a 1 vs 2 game?
Yeah, welcome to
The war was over and two things took place:
a) a baby boom among the returning soldiers
b) college attendance increasing massively
It was this latter, of course, that helped load the rosters of college football teams, although it would take a couple of years to cycle through. Two-time defending champion Army was back for a three-peat, although that term wouldn't exist for over four more decades. Texas began the year #1 and in typical Longhorn fashion lost to Rice, pushing Army to the top spot. Scheduled to play the improving Notre Dame, the 1946 Army-Notre Dame contest was AT THAT TIME the most hyped college football game in history, so much so they invited 71-year old Verne Lundquist to call it. And naturally, the game ended in a tie, although Ara Parseghian was in the military.
To be fair, nobody intended for this game to end in a tie. The Irish outgained Army, 225-190, but they also turned the ball over seven times. When the game ended in a tie, Army stayed #1, no big deal. Until they barely scraped by arch rival Navy, who was 1-8. That lackluster win gave the voters the impetus to vote for Notre Dame as #1, and the Irish won the title and prevented the three-peat.
2) Oklahoma is about to become a national power thanks to buying players from Tulsa.
And keep buying them for years!!
OK (see what I did there?), let's be fair - Oklahoma was not even close to the only school buying military veterans from the good Tulsa teams of a few years earlier. A story in "The Saturday Evening Post" (and we all know their commitment to accuracy) exposed the racket of the eight players OU got from Tulsa, all WW2 veterans. By the standards of the time, it was a yuge scandal.
3) Poor Jawja......
OK, tell me what these teams have in common:
1936 LSU
1936 Alabama
1937 Alabama
1938 Tennessee
1939 Tennessee
1940 Tennessee
1945 Alabama
1946 Georgia
The correct answer is, "Those teams all went undefeated but didn't win the national championship." The top two had ties, but the other teams were all unbeaten at the time of the poll. That's not to say that the wrong team won the title - but when one conference is getting victimized almost every year and it's different teams, it gives rise to accusations of bias. And while the earlier cases sans 1939 Tennessee - who as I remind you didn't even give up a single point - are debatable, both 45 UA and 46 UGA present LEGITIMATE cases for the national championship.
The SEC of the 1940s, of course, was not the SEC of the 80s or 90s and beyond. But how is it possible that the same conference can come up short year after year after year?
4) But did the right team win the national championship?
In a word, probably. PROBABLY.
A number of sportswriters, some who no doubt had votes, looked at the scores and decided Army's dominance was largely due to getting some strapping in shape men prepping for war while other programs were depleted beyond description. But they noticed an obvious issue:
Army failed in 12 straight tries against Notre Dame, ten of them losses.
Players went to war while Army built strength (and won two Heisman Trophies).
Army not only beats Notre Dame, they baste them - 59-0 and 48-0 - and the moment the soldiers return to college, Army can't beat the Irish.
And keep this in mind - despite high-powered offenses in context of the time, Army started with no fewer than SIX possessions inside the Notre Dame 33-yard line in their game...and got 0 points. They didn't even particularly threaten the goal line. This fact alone came close to proving the hypothesis that Army wasn't fielding powerful offenses, the opposition was fielding horrific defenses.
It's sort of bizarre - Notre Dame benefited from a two-pronged defense:
a) Army wasn't really that good
b) But wait! Notre Dame ended the Army winning streak!
There IS a case to be made for Georgia - the Bulldogs played the toughest schedule of the three unbeaten contenders. Of course, a team CAN play the toughest schedule but NOT be the best team, that's true. And then there's the strange case of UCLA.
We can dismiss UCLA for no other reason than they were sandblasted by Illinois in the Rose Bowl, 45-14. That, too, has a tad bit of intrigue behind it because the Rose Bowl WANTED to invite Army. Given the circumstances, that might possibly have altered everything as early as 1946. What if Army had lost a vote to the Irish and then gone and blown Illinois off the field? Would there not have been some level of outcry of the injustice? But there are two reasons Army didn't go to the Rose Bowl:
a) the school didn't want to go, largely preferring to remain an academic institution
b) the Big Ten (then a 9-team conference called the Western Conference, showing they started terrible at geography long before they couldn't count) approved a five-year Rose Bowl contract to face the Pacific Coast Conference in the Rose Bowl via a 7-2 vote, with Minnesota and Wisconsin opposing.
The Western Conference did this IN PART to step into the picture and sort of nudge Army out of the way. Conference politics is nothing new. WHY was this a big deal? Because the 1947 Rose Bowl was going to be the first one ever broadcast on television, albeit locally. The five-year contract bought them time to get the game telecast nationally, which would happen with the 1952 game - with Alabama grad and Yankees announcer Mel Allen doing the honors in a Stanford vs Illinois tilt.
But UCLA was viewed largely as UCF was in 2017 and for good reason - they played nobody of note and their big names like Santa Clara and Nebraska weren't all that good in 1946. Notre Dame beat Illinois who bombed UCLA, which wasn't a result available at the time of the final poll.
Notre Dame won largely on the basis of an unbeaten record, prior reputation, an inflated reputation for Army, and more anti-Southern bias. The Irish were now 22 years removed from the invoking of the term "The Four Horsemen" (Tully, Arn, Flair, whoever) and 15 years past Knute Rockne. This was the second generation, and Irish eyes were smiling as the sport was about to enter a controversial era of recounts and reactions to integration.
Last edited:
Up through at least the 1970's, there was a bias in the polls against southern teams. Usually Bama or Tennessee or LSU or Ole Miss were only finally ranked Number #1 after Ohio State, Notre Dame and Michigan lost.
A prime example is 1979... Bama going for its 2nd straight National Championship was undefeated but ranked number #2 after the regular season. Bama only won the 1979 AP Championship because Ohio State lost the Rose Bowl.
It is not by chance that the SEC only starts dominating National Championships after being able to play for them ( BCS and CFP).
A prime example is 1979... Bama going for its 2nd straight National Championship was undefeated but ranked number #2 after the regular season. Bama only won the 1979 AP Championship because Ohio State lost the Rose Bowl.
It is not by chance that the SEC only starts dominating National Championships after being able to play for them ( BCS and CFP).
Or that Cam Newton really didn’t know his dad got a bunch of cash.
"Notre Dame would have to be defeated, and all the Big Ten teams would have to be beaten at least once. I don't mean that as a blast at the polls, I'm just being realistic. It's where the population is that counts. Any team in this section of the country, the Southwest, has a harder time getting national recognition."
Darrell Royal, Texas coach
September 2, 1970
Musing that Texas could run the table and move their winning streak to 20, Royal points out that won't win the consecutive national title unless the Northern teams lose.
Darrell Royal, Texas coach
September 2, 1970
Musing that Texas could run the table and move their winning streak to 20, Royal points out that won't win the consecutive national title unless the Northern teams lose.
1947 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Notre Dame 9-0
Unbeaten/Untied teams:#2 Michigan 9-0, #4 Penn St 9-0
Unbeaten teams with ties: #3 SMU 9-0-1, #7 Penn 7-0-1, #13 Kansas 8-0-2
And now we get to a rather interesting one. Notre Dame is defending champion. Notre Dame goes 9-0. So does Michigan. The Wolverines then routed USC in the Rose Bowl, 49-0...the same USC that Notre Dame beat by "only" 32 points. After the bowls, the AP took a recount, which Michigan won.
And then the AP threw out the recount poll and recognized Notre Dame as the national champion. Nobody would have been surprised if the officials suddenly ruled halfway through a game that Notre Dame's touchdowns were now worth 10 points.
Penn St is 9-0, yes, but played a pile of nobody and then wound up with a tie to SMU in the Cotton Bowl. This was important because SMU was the sole team to beat Texas and based on schedule, Texas probably should have been the national champion. To do this, of course, Texas would have had to relocate to the Midwest, where their 9-1 record would have been enough to win it all.
No, the real debate in 1947 is between Notre Dame and Michigan. The Wolverines faced a much tougher schedule and did better against it, but Notre Dame was the defending champion and didn't lose. Michigan beat Pitt by 69 points, the Irish by "only" 36, beat Northwestern by 28 while the Irish won by "only" 7, and played two Big Nine teams Michigan didn't play while the Wolverines also beat USC by more. In short, the three common foes of the two teams were decisively in favor of Michigan, a fact that helped Notre Dame squeak past Army in 1946 despite the tie.
Either team - under the circumstances - is acceptable. Michigan has the better overall performance, but the Irish were undefeated and defending champions. Circumstances were aligning so that another poll could enter the fray andrectify muddy these constant controversies.
National champion: Notre Dame 9-0
Unbeaten/Untied teams:#2 Michigan 9-0, #4 Penn St 9-0
Unbeaten teams with ties: #3 SMU 9-0-1, #7 Penn 7-0-1, #13 Kansas 8-0-2
And now we get to a rather interesting one. Notre Dame is defending champion. Notre Dame goes 9-0. So does Michigan. The Wolverines then routed USC in the Rose Bowl, 49-0...the same USC that Notre Dame beat by "only" 32 points. After the bowls, the AP took a recount, which Michigan won.
And then the AP threw out the recount poll and recognized Notre Dame as the national champion. Nobody would have been surprised if the officials suddenly ruled halfway through a game that Notre Dame's touchdowns were now worth 10 points.
Penn St is 9-0, yes, but played a pile of nobody and then wound up with a tie to SMU in the Cotton Bowl. This was important because SMU was the sole team to beat Texas and based on schedule, Texas probably should have been the national champion. To do this, of course, Texas would have had to relocate to the Midwest, where their 9-1 record would have been enough to win it all.
No, the real debate in 1947 is between Notre Dame and Michigan. The Wolverines faced a much tougher schedule and did better against it, but Notre Dame was the defending champion and didn't lose. Michigan beat Pitt by 69 points, the Irish by "only" 36, beat Northwestern by 28 while the Irish won by "only" 7, and played two Big Nine teams Michigan didn't play while the Wolverines also beat USC by more. In short, the three common foes of the two teams were decisively in favor of Michigan, a fact that helped Notre Dame squeak past Army in 1946 despite the tie.
Either team - under the circumstances - is acceptable. Michigan has the better overall performance, but the Irish were undefeated and defending champions. Circumstances were aligning so that another poll could enter the fray and
1948 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Michigan 9-0
Unbeaten/Untied teams:#2 Notre Dame 9-0, #4 Cal 10-0, #11 Clemson 9-0
Unbeaten teams with ties: #3 N Carolina 9-0-1, #6 Army 8-0-1
1) This would never happen today but...
Clemson ran the table against an unimpressive slate of opponents. In the convenience department, Clemson and N Carolina didn't play each other. The amusing thing is how this was always an argument when it involved the ACC and SEC - but conveniently ignored for the Big Ten. Bias in polls has ALWAYS been evident, but more often than not, they are/were correct.
2) Army was running a racket....
We've noted that Army had an immense advantage, but I haven't disclosed the full import of it. Yes, I've mentioned the shady dealings at Oklahoma as well as Pitt, but understand that the willingness to bend, skirt, and outright break the rules was universal. And it affected the US Military Academy during the war.
Here's how Army's racket worked: if you could get into the academy, you were exempt from the draft going on during World War Two. Sort of similar to "hiding out" in the Guard during Vietnam, it was a "more honorable" way to avoid getting killed in the war. Army played along with this, grabbing athletes left and right while the other schools saw their potential recruits drafted. The deck was heavily stacked in Army's favor. Of course - like when a bunch of thieves get together - it was inevitable what was going to happen. Once the war ended, the future officers (many of them) had no desire to continue their service/education, so a number of them quit. Of course, an aide of Harry Truman's referring to military officer trainees as "draft dodgers" was NOT going to go over well in 1946, so the actions that could be taken were limited. One player - Thomas McWilliams - decided he wanted to transfer once the war ended, particularly since he was being offered some nice cash to blow in the nonexistent casinos of Stark-Vegas. Army had been letting guys go who wouldn't be military officers but then in this case Major General Maxwell Taylor - showing the political tone deafness that would make him a legend of the escalating Vietnam debacle 20 years later - shot his mouth off and said they wouldn't let the player go BECAUSE he was offered inducements (never mind this had gone on repeatedly). MSU, of course, denied any offer was made.
The outcome of Army recruiting guys to a military academy whose emphasis was football and without regard to character was completely predictable. In 1951, an academic cheating scandal blew the academy apart, even implicating the son of the head coach, Red Blaik. But Army caused their problems and it is always thus. Fortunately, it's not like the SEC ever had a school with any sort of honor code whose star quarterback sold autographs after winning the Heisman Trophy and they hid behind that code. That would never happen, you know.
Also, how did Army go undefeated? Well, they dropped Notre Dame from the schedule, the stated reason being "to maintain academic emphasis," the real reason being, "they're going to beat our asses senseless." Notre Dame pulled a fast one by replacing Army with Michigan State, a thoroughly brilliant tactic that enabled the Irish to play the equivalent of a Big Ten schedule without being able to lose the Big Ten title or forced to play in the Rose Bowl. (Note: the Big 10 is still the Big 9 at this point). Michigan is winning the Big Ten title for playing six foes, but the Irish are now facing five most years.
3) No Western teams need to apply
for the second time, Cal goes undefeated and for the second time no love in the polls.
4) But did the right team win the national championship?
In a word, yes. Michigan should have been the champion in 1947 and they pulled off a rare feat, winning a national champion despite Notre Dame being: a) defending champion; and b) undefeated. The post-bowl poll of the previous year contributed, but it also contributed to closer analysis, too. Though the Irish DID beat new foe Michigan State by more points (in the UM opener), the reality is that Michigan blew the other common foes out save Northwestern, still one point more in UM's favor. Michigan's margin over Notre Dame was LESS IMPRESSIVE than in 1947, but it was enough for voters who felt they got hosed.
5) Not that this would ever happen today but.....
In the "I didn't pay attention" category, Ole Miss got 13 first-place votes in the final poll. What makes this next-level insane is that 8-1 Ole Miss lost to Tulane, who had a 9-1 record by THIRTEEN points. Although Tulane did wind up a few spots higher in the final poll, how did Ole Miss get what amounted to one first-place vote for each point they lost by while Tulane got zip?? Neither team deserved a first-place vote, but are you serious???
And this was what would set the stage for OLE MISS to start winning national titles. "Hey, they've been good a long time" is going to help the Rebs in about a decade.
National champion: Michigan 9-0
Unbeaten/Untied teams:#2 Notre Dame 9-0, #4 Cal 10-0, #11 Clemson 9-0
Unbeaten teams with ties: #3 N Carolina 9-0-1, #6 Army 8-0-1
1) This would never happen today but...
Clemson ran the table against an unimpressive slate of opponents. In the convenience department, Clemson and N Carolina didn't play each other. The amusing thing is how this was always an argument when it involved the ACC and SEC - but conveniently ignored for the Big Ten. Bias in polls has ALWAYS been evident, but more often than not, they are/were correct.
2) Army was running a racket....
We've noted that Army had an immense advantage, but I haven't disclosed the full import of it. Yes, I've mentioned the shady dealings at Oklahoma as well as Pitt, but understand that the willingness to bend, skirt, and outright break the rules was universal. And it affected the US Military Academy during the war.
Here's how Army's racket worked: if you could get into the academy, you were exempt from the draft going on during World War Two. Sort of similar to "hiding out" in the Guard during Vietnam, it was a "more honorable" way to avoid getting killed in the war. Army played along with this, grabbing athletes left and right while the other schools saw their potential recruits drafted. The deck was heavily stacked in Army's favor. Of course - like when a bunch of thieves get together - it was inevitable what was going to happen. Once the war ended, the future officers (many of them) had no desire to continue their service/education, so a number of them quit. Of course, an aide of Harry Truman's referring to military officer trainees as "draft dodgers" was NOT going to go over well in 1946, so the actions that could be taken were limited. One player - Thomas McWilliams - decided he wanted to transfer once the war ended, particularly since he was being offered some nice cash to blow in the nonexistent casinos of Stark-Vegas. Army had been letting guys go who wouldn't be military officers but then in this case Major General Maxwell Taylor - showing the political tone deafness that would make him a legend of the escalating Vietnam debacle 20 years later - shot his mouth off and said they wouldn't let the player go BECAUSE he was offered inducements (never mind this had gone on repeatedly). MSU, of course, denied any offer was made.
The outcome of Army recruiting guys to a military academy whose emphasis was football and without regard to character was completely predictable. In 1951, an academic cheating scandal blew the academy apart, even implicating the son of the head coach, Red Blaik. But Army caused their problems and it is always thus. Fortunately, it's not like the SEC ever had a school with any sort of honor code whose star quarterback sold autographs after winning the Heisman Trophy and they hid behind that code. That would never happen, you know.
Also, how did Army go undefeated? Well, they dropped Notre Dame from the schedule, the stated reason being "to maintain academic emphasis," the real reason being, "they're going to beat our asses senseless." Notre Dame pulled a fast one by replacing Army with Michigan State, a thoroughly brilliant tactic that enabled the Irish to play the equivalent of a Big Ten schedule without being able to lose the Big Ten title or forced to play in the Rose Bowl. (Note: the Big 10 is still the Big 9 at this point). Michigan is winning the Big Ten title for playing six foes, but the Irish are now facing five most years.
3) No Western teams need to apply
for the second time, Cal goes undefeated and for the second time no love in the polls.
4) But did the right team win the national championship?
In a word, yes. Michigan should have been the champion in 1947 and they pulled off a rare feat, winning a national champion despite Notre Dame being: a) defending champion; and b) undefeated. The post-bowl poll of the previous year contributed, but it also contributed to closer analysis, too. Though the Irish DID beat new foe Michigan State by more points (in the UM opener), the reality is that Michigan blew the other common foes out save Northwestern, still one point more in UM's favor. Michigan's margin over Notre Dame was LESS IMPRESSIVE than in 1947, but it was enough for voters who felt they got hosed.
5) Not that this would ever happen today but.....
In the "I didn't pay attention" category, Ole Miss got 13 first-place votes in the final poll. What makes this next-level insane is that 8-1 Ole Miss lost to Tulane, who had a 9-1 record by THIRTEEN points. Although Tulane did wind up a few spots higher in the final poll, how did Ole Miss get what amounted to one first-place vote for each point they lost by while Tulane got zip?? Neither team deserved a first-place vote, but are you serious???
And this was what would set the stage for OLE MISS to start winning national titles. "Hey, they've been good a long time" is going to help the Rebs in about a decade.
1949 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Notre Dame 9-0
Unbeaten/Untied teams:#2 Oklahoma 10-0, #3 Cal 10-0, #4 Army 9-0, #10 Pacific 10-0
Thank God that Tim Brando didn't exist or have a microphone in 1949 because one can only imagine how he would have ranted and raved like a Cajun with a howling case of herpes (named "Karen") had he viewed the season-ending poll for 1949.The second legendary era of Notre Dame is building, and it is the one that far more people remember, the one that entrenched "the Irish are great" into the American consciousness.
Oklahoma also made yet another appearance close to the top. In fact, the Sooners are about to build a dynasty that likely would have surpassed Notre Dame had it not been the Irish (of all people) who ended their upcoming 47-gae winning streak.
And just think - if only TV had been a big deal in 1949, pundits would have said, "We need an eight-team playoff to determine the champion, and a playoff isn't legit without Pacific." Pacific was actually a more legitimate claimant to any sort of tournament than UCF ever dreamed of being. They won their last three games by scores of 45-0, 88-0, and 75-0 and - unlike UCF - they didn't need the happy circumstance of weather canceling their sole decent opponent.
1) Reminder - the AP poll is a very loose association with no checks and balances in 1949.
I've noted before that the AP often had folks who didn't vote in ANY ballot except the final one. And we didn't have the luxury of seeing or taking bowl games into account, either. The AP didn't get fully formalized with built-in checks to dilute regional bias until 1960, when the voters were reduced from "hundreds" down to 48 voters equally distributed according to region. This was necessary because....
2) Bias and prejudice are a reality of life - even for (and sometimes ESPECIALLY for) poll voters.
Let's be crystal clear: ALL of us are biased.
Let's counter that with a second reality - "but that does not mean we are all EQUALLY biased."
Intelligent people admit their biases, try to overcome them, and render their best judgment. People lacking self-awareness or any notion of fairness can (without straining their brains or nonexistent intellect) actually vote for UCF at #1 in 2017. The best analysts try to not the right hand know what the left hand is doing.
Bear this in mind: Alan Gould created the 1936 AP poll INTENDING to create controversy, and he succeeded far beyond his wildest dreams. Without a ranking system or a champion, would there REALLY be the level of interest in college football that does exist? Unfortunately, that does not mean every voter takes his (or nowadays in some cases HER) role seriously enough.
The poll has created some of the most ludicrous occurrences in the history of ANY sport. There are numerous problems that have been covered (including in a fine - available for free online - study by UNF in 2010 about AP football poll bias), but let's look at a few of the more insane decisions that didn't make much news because they didn't affect the national championship:
- in 1990, a voter ranked 1-5 LSU in the Top 25 poll.
- two voters in 1990 ranked BYU at #5 because they'd beaten Miami - ignoring they'd been blown out by Hawaii
- one voter was removed after saying "I could never vote for an ACC team as the #1 team."
- in 1988, one voter forgot to rank Florida St anywhere, a circumstance that saw the Noles drop from 5 to 7.
But it's also possible to make too much of this. When 57 out of 60 voters all across the country choose one team over another one, their decisions may not be perfect, but that pretty much rules out any notion of regional bias, too. Fans, in particular, are fond of dismissing any poll that ranks their team lower than someone else as "biased," 'as though the accusation is enough to justify the opinion. Polls are NOT perfect, and in all honesty, polls prior to the BCS title game starting with the 1998 season need to be viewed largely through the lens of "the bigger name."
3) Once again, the Cal Bears lose out.
The bias - such as it existed in 1949 - was heavily weighted towards the Midwestern teams. This should not be completely surprising. When NINE of the nation's ten largest cities are east of the Mississippi River (okay, St Louis technically is ON the river) and the newspapers are heavily weighted towards New York, Chicago, Philly, Boston, and Cleveland, guess what? In an era with (almost) no television, still developing Coast to Coast air travel, and the hard fact college football was invented in the Northeast in 1869 and then moved downward and outward, NONE OF THIS should be a surprise. It's very probable that not one major sportswriter outside of Los Angeles - and maybe even there - ever saw the Bay Area based Cal Bears play a game. Cal ran off an incredible regular season run of 29-1 in the period of 1947-49, and never came close to winning the national title.
Go look at the polls - the Eastern teams rate higher almost every single time. It's an amazingly predictable pattern - several teams go undefeated and the Eastern teams are virtually ALWAYS ranked higher (using "Big Ten" as a metaphor as well towards the East). I'll skip the 1943-44 polls because that was the war situation thoroughly changed everything enough it's not a good data point in any direction. I will include only the polls where you had a clear East vs West/South competition factor (e.g. excluding 1947 when it was Michigan and Notre Dame)
==========
1936 - #1 Minnesota 7-1 over 7-0 Santa Clara, who is ranked below both SEC undefeated teams
1937 - #1 Pitt over #2 Cal and #3 Fordham and #4 Alabama (reminder - Pitt and Fordham tied). Yeah, you can argue "Cal is west of New York," but Cal didn't get a single first-place vote while Fordham got two and Alabama got one.
1940 - #1 Minnesota but #2 Stanford and #4 Tennessee also undefeated
1941 - #1 Minnesota 8-0, #2 Duke 9-0
1942 - #1 Ohio St 9-1, #2 UGA 10-1
1945 - #1 Army, Alabama and OK State undefeated
1946 - #1 Notre Dame (with a tie) and #3 UGA and #4 UCLA with better records
1948 - Michigan, N Dame, UNC ALL RATED above 10-0 Cal
1949 - #1 Notre Dame ahead of Oklahoma and Cal
============
In every case WITHOUT EXCEPTION, the "northern/Midwestern/Eastern team with the best record" ALWAYS gets the nod EVERY SINGLE TIME over the Southern/Western team. Of course, the objection will be "you conveniently excluded 1938 and 1939, when teams from Texas won the championship."
well yeah, but maybe you should go look at those years. In 1938, there NO UNDEFEATED EASTERN/MIDWESTERN TEAMS!!! Notre Dame was still the highest-rated team with one loss to - of all teams - USC. But Texas also (wait for it) had MORE VOTERS IN THEIR STATE than Tennessee did, too. In 1939, you have MAYBE the one exception with Cornell. But one could just as easily argue the biggest point against Cornell was that ATM and Tennessee played TWO MORE GAMES rather than just one more. Yes, in 1939 USC did rate #3 with two ties. But still, it's close to ironclad: get into a vote with an unbeaten Notre Dame or Big Ten team when you're from out west, and you're toast. So you get ONE exception in the first 14 years of the poll (technically 12), and even that exception has some mitigating circumstances, some of which I covered in the post.
However.....
4) That does NOT in and of itself mean the polls were meaningless.
It's true that the polls do show a skew towards the East, which could just as easily be explained as, "We actually saw these teams play." But note also that the moment that USC beat Notre Dame in 1938, they went undefeated in the polls and finished #3 in 1939. The polls that show the Eastern bias ALSO show two other important points:
a) the voters DID (in general) respond to upsets and alter their views in subsequent years
b) they were still right more often than they were wrong, which is no different than the BCS or CFP.
National champion: Notre Dame 9-0
Unbeaten/Untied teams:#2 Oklahoma 10-0, #3 Cal 10-0, #4 Army 9-0, #10 Pacific 10-0
Thank God that Tim Brando didn't exist or have a microphone in 1949 because one can only imagine how he would have ranted and raved like a Cajun with a howling case of herpes (named "Karen") had he viewed the season-ending poll for 1949.The second legendary era of Notre Dame is building, and it is the one that far more people remember, the one that entrenched "the Irish are great" into the American consciousness.
Oklahoma also made yet another appearance close to the top. In fact, the Sooners are about to build a dynasty that likely would have surpassed Notre Dame had it not been the Irish (of all people) who ended their upcoming 47-gae winning streak.
And just think - if only TV had been a big deal in 1949, pundits would have said, "We need an eight-team playoff to determine the champion, and a playoff isn't legit without Pacific." Pacific was actually a more legitimate claimant to any sort of tournament than UCF ever dreamed of being. They won their last three games by scores of 45-0, 88-0, and 75-0 and - unlike UCF - they didn't need the happy circumstance of weather canceling their sole decent opponent.
1) Reminder - the AP poll is a very loose association with no checks and balances in 1949.
I've noted before that the AP often had folks who didn't vote in ANY ballot except the final one. And we didn't have the luxury of seeing or taking bowl games into account, either. The AP didn't get fully formalized with built-in checks to dilute regional bias until 1960, when the voters were reduced from "hundreds" down to 48 voters equally distributed according to region. This was necessary because....
2) Bias and prejudice are a reality of life - even for (and sometimes ESPECIALLY for) poll voters.
Let's be crystal clear: ALL of us are biased.
Let's counter that with a second reality - "but that does not mean we are all EQUALLY biased."
Intelligent people admit their biases, try to overcome them, and render their best judgment. People lacking self-awareness or any notion of fairness can (without straining their brains or nonexistent intellect) actually vote for UCF at #1 in 2017. The best analysts try to not the right hand know what the left hand is doing.
Bear this in mind: Alan Gould created the 1936 AP poll INTENDING to create controversy, and he succeeded far beyond his wildest dreams. Without a ranking system or a champion, would there REALLY be the level of interest in college football that does exist? Unfortunately, that does not mean every voter takes his (or nowadays in some cases HER) role seriously enough.
The poll has created some of the most ludicrous occurrences in the history of ANY sport. There are numerous problems that have been covered (including in a fine - available for free online - study by UNF in 2010 about AP football poll bias), but let's look at a few of the more insane decisions that didn't make much news because they didn't affect the national championship:
- in 1990, a voter ranked 1-5 LSU in the Top 25 poll.
- two voters in 1990 ranked BYU at #5 because they'd beaten Miami - ignoring they'd been blown out by Hawaii
- one voter was removed after saying "I could never vote for an ACC team as the #1 team."
- in 1988, one voter forgot to rank Florida St anywhere, a circumstance that saw the Noles drop from 5 to 7.
But it's also possible to make too much of this. When 57 out of 60 voters all across the country choose one team over another one, their decisions may not be perfect, but that pretty much rules out any notion of regional bias, too. Fans, in particular, are fond of dismissing any poll that ranks their team lower than someone else as "biased," 'as though the accusation is enough to justify the opinion. Polls are NOT perfect, and in all honesty, polls prior to the BCS title game starting with the 1998 season need to be viewed largely through the lens of "the bigger name."
3) Once again, the Cal Bears lose out.
The bias - such as it existed in 1949 - was heavily weighted towards the Midwestern teams. This should not be completely surprising. When NINE of the nation's ten largest cities are east of the Mississippi River (okay, St Louis technically is ON the river) and the newspapers are heavily weighted towards New York, Chicago, Philly, Boston, and Cleveland, guess what? In an era with (almost) no television, still developing Coast to Coast air travel, and the hard fact college football was invented in the Northeast in 1869 and then moved downward and outward, NONE OF THIS should be a surprise. It's very probable that not one major sportswriter outside of Los Angeles - and maybe even there - ever saw the Bay Area based Cal Bears play a game. Cal ran off an incredible regular season run of 29-1 in the period of 1947-49, and never came close to winning the national title.
Go look at the polls - the Eastern teams rate higher almost every single time. It's an amazingly predictable pattern - several teams go undefeated and the Eastern teams are virtually ALWAYS ranked higher (using "Big Ten" as a metaphor as well towards the East). I'll skip the 1943-44 polls because that was the war situation thoroughly changed everything enough it's not a good data point in any direction. I will include only the polls where you had a clear East vs West/South competition factor (e.g. excluding 1947 when it was Michigan and Notre Dame)
==========
1936 - #1 Minnesota 7-1 over 7-0 Santa Clara, who is ranked below both SEC undefeated teams
1937 - #1 Pitt over #2 Cal and #3 Fordham and #4 Alabama (reminder - Pitt and Fordham tied). Yeah, you can argue "Cal is west of New York," but Cal didn't get a single first-place vote while Fordham got two and Alabama got one.
1940 - #1 Minnesota but #2 Stanford and #4 Tennessee also undefeated
1941 - #1 Minnesota 8-0, #2 Duke 9-0
1942 - #1 Ohio St 9-1, #2 UGA 10-1
1945 - #1 Army, Alabama and OK State undefeated
1946 - #1 Notre Dame (with a tie) and #3 UGA and #4 UCLA with better records
1948 - Michigan, N Dame, UNC ALL RATED above 10-0 Cal
1949 - #1 Notre Dame ahead of Oklahoma and Cal
============
In every case WITHOUT EXCEPTION, the "northern/Midwestern/Eastern team with the best record" ALWAYS gets the nod EVERY SINGLE TIME over the Southern/Western team. Of course, the objection will be "you conveniently excluded 1938 and 1939, when teams from Texas won the championship."
well yeah, but maybe you should go look at those years. In 1938, there NO UNDEFEATED EASTERN/MIDWESTERN TEAMS!!! Notre Dame was still the highest-rated team with one loss to - of all teams - USC. But Texas also (wait for it) had MORE VOTERS IN THEIR STATE than Tennessee did, too. In 1939, you have MAYBE the one exception with Cornell. But one could just as easily argue the biggest point against Cornell was that ATM and Tennessee played TWO MORE GAMES rather than just one more. Yes, in 1939 USC did rate #3 with two ties. But still, it's close to ironclad: get into a vote with an unbeaten Notre Dame or Big Ten team when you're from out west, and you're toast. So you get ONE exception in the first 14 years of the poll (technically 12), and even that exception has some mitigating circumstances, some of which I covered in the post.
However.....
4) That does NOT in and of itself mean the polls were meaningless.
It's true that the polls do show a skew towards the East, which could just as easily be explained as, "We actually saw these teams play." But note also that the moment that USC beat Notre Dame in 1938, they went undefeated in the polls and finished #3 in 1939. The polls that show the Eastern bias ALSO show two other important points:
a) the voters DID (in general) respond to upsets and alter their views in subsequent years
b) they were still right more often than they were wrong, which is no different than the BCS or CFP.
5) The perception of Notre Dame and the Big Ten as "better than the other folks" WAS, in fact, LARGELY justified at the time.
This, in all honesty, is no different than today, when you sometimes find a two-loss Georgia or Ohio State rated very highly. But then you'd see the Big Ten wipe the floor (more often than not) with the West Coast teams, and Notre Dame in some years would be better in the Big Ten than all but one or two Big Ten schools while still being denied membership. (I use the term Big Ten anachronistically so you know who I mean - they were often the Big Nine in the 1940s after Chicago left).
For example, when Coach Clark Shaugnessy leaves Chicago after succeeding A.A. Stagg and can't beat anyone in the Big Ten but then goes to Stanford and immediately has an undefeated season, IT IS, in fact, REASONABLE to conclude, "Yeah, because the teams aren't as good out there."
6) Analysis requires more than just numbers, but you can't just throw them out, either.
The problem is that people demand CERTAINTY to something that can only be determined on the basis of PROBABILITY. And the weakness of the arguments to include teams like UCF or 1998 Tulane stem from confusing POSSIBILITY with PROBABILITY.
We demand (as humans) a resolution to things. We want a beginning and a conclusion. And though there is NO SUCH THING as perfect analysis (if such existed, a gambler could win every single bet he makes on college football), that does not make it useless, either. The BEST fans recognize both the asset of and limits to analysis.
7) But did the right team win the 1949 national championship?
This one is difficult to answer. If you include the bowl games (which they didn't) then, "NO!" Oklahoma played a schedule every bit as solid as the Irish did. The disgrace is that Notre Dame won simply "because they're Notre Dame." Based on how they did at the time - again - the selection is DEFENSIBLE and not necessarily wrong, but it also shows the need for the never-to-be-played Oklahoma-Notre Dame BCS title game.
The dissatisfaction was growing by the year and 1950 would see a new competitor to the Associated Press in the college football poll. What was about to happen was twenty years of mind-boggling chaos and counter-arguments that would change everything. And it had its roots in a 1945 Supreme Court ruling that the Associated Press had violated the Sherman Antitrust Law.
This, in all honesty, is no different than today, when you sometimes find a two-loss Georgia or Ohio State rated very highly. But then you'd see the Big Ten wipe the floor (more often than not) with the West Coast teams, and Notre Dame in some years would be better in the Big Ten than all but one or two Big Ten schools while still being denied membership. (I use the term Big Ten anachronistically so you know who I mean - they were often the Big Nine in the 1940s after Chicago left).
For example, when Coach Clark Shaugnessy leaves Chicago after succeeding A.A. Stagg and can't beat anyone in the Big Ten but then goes to Stanford and immediately has an undefeated season, IT IS, in fact, REASONABLE to conclude, "Yeah, because the teams aren't as good out there."
6) Analysis requires more than just numbers, but you can't just throw them out, either.
The problem is that people demand CERTAINTY to something that can only be determined on the basis of PROBABILITY. And the weakness of the arguments to include teams like UCF or 1998 Tulane stem from confusing POSSIBILITY with PROBABILITY.
We demand (as humans) a resolution to things. We want a beginning and a conclusion. And though there is NO SUCH THING as perfect analysis (if such existed, a gambler could win every single bet he makes on college football), that does not make it useless, either. The BEST fans recognize both the asset of and limits to analysis.
7) But did the right team win the 1949 national championship?
This one is difficult to answer. If you include the bowl games (which they didn't) then, "NO!" Oklahoma played a schedule every bit as solid as the Irish did. The disgrace is that Notre Dame won simply "because they're Notre Dame." Based on how they did at the time - again - the selection is DEFENSIBLE and not necessarily wrong, but it also shows the need for the never-to-be-played Oklahoma-Notre Dame BCS title game.
The dissatisfaction was growing by the year and 1950 would see a new competitor to the Associated Press in the college football poll. What was about to happen was twenty years of mind-boggling chaos and counter-arguments that would change everything. And it had its roots in a 1945 Supreme Court ruling that the Associated Press had violated the Sherman Antitrust Law.
1950 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Oklahoma 9-0
Undefeated teams:#2 Army 8-0, #7 Princeton 9-0, #12 Wyoming
Undefeated teams with ties: #5 Cal 9-0-1, #15 8-0-1 Miami
UP Champion: Oklahoma
1) Introducing......the United Press poll......
On June 18, 1945, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that would alter the course of college football history despite the case having literally nothing to do with college football. On that day, the Court determined that the Associated Press conglomerate of news organizations had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.
At the time of the ruling, the AP consisted of over 1200 newspapers in all 48 states that despite using local reporters with their own version of telling the news had, since 1900, been a cooperative news arm where despite this local bent, the AP could sanction or even expel members who violated their by-laws. There were only two groups that were even remotely competitive with the AP - the United Press and the International News Service. These three groups combined contributed (in 1945) to all but 7 daily morning newspapers in the USA. What eventually happened (in layman's terms) is that the AP got other groups to agree not to sue them or their papers in exchange for the AP taking their side...and when you pretty much control 96% of the newspapers in that pre-television time, it's not hard to see what would happen. The AP lost the case...and as a consequence, the UP decided to conduct THEIR OWN football poll. And with that one decision based on the other one, it was bound to get out of hand.
So, of course, the Associated Press decided to counter with....
2) Introducing.....the first-ever Associated Press PRE-SEASON poll......
In the "you set my dumpster on fire, therefore, I will set your house on fire" department, the AP retaliated with their own means of setting the narrative...the pre-season poll, which they'd never done. But to show you how bad this could be, all you really have to know is that 121 voters submitted first-place votes on behalf of the teams in the first AP poll Top Ten while 322 submitted ballots in the final count. To show the madness was just beginning, no fewer than FIFTEEN of the final TOP 20 teams had a first-place vote, including two votes for 6-2-1 Nebraska, one for 8-2 Alabama and - stunning as this may sound - two for 8-2 Washington and Lee. It's almost as though the AP, who went from 218 final ballots to 322, wanted to use their superior numbers to overwhelm the UP. The UP - which was basically a vote of 35 college football coaches - didn't publish a poll until after the end of the regular season but - like the AP - BEFORE the bowl games. In all honesty, they could have gained more momentum by counting the bowls.
It's almost as though the AP was attempting to strangle the UP in the cradle. Assure your papers cover your poll and move it back prior to the season and build momentum for your teams...there's a certain level of karma that nowadays, the COACH'S POLL (which is what the old UP is now) is more revered than the AP poll is.
3) OK, so did the twin polls get the right national champion?
After screwing Oklahoma in 1949, the polls seem to have said to themselves, "OK (SWIDT?), we'll let you have one so this new poll doesn't pick someone else and cause us a problem." But we should also note that the old "East Coast bias" problem was mostly mitigated by on-the-field results. Notre Dame - and you can win a trivia contest with this one - was the first AP pre-season number one. But though there were pre-season polls, they then suspended release of the first regular season poll until after every team played a game. Notre Dame held on for a week and then lost to Purdue en route to a 4-4-1 debacle under Frank Leahy. But the early results saw Michigan St pole vault the field - beating Oregon St and then knocking off #2 Michigan. It's always amazing to me how the same pollsters will say "Oregon St is no good" but apparently was good enough coupled with an overrated Michigan (pardon the redundancy) to blast Sparty all the way to number two. But Sparty lost a 27-point blowout to Maryland and you have to remember one key point - Sparty WAS NOT IN THE BIG TEN at the time. They didn't have "East Coast Mafia protection" when they lost if I may slightly exaggerate here.***
Army rose to the top. Why? Well, they beat the same Michigan team that Sparty beat, so obviously Army was good. But as Michigan slumped, SMU's win over Ohio St miraculously turned the Mustangs in the top team in the nation where.........they lost to Texas. So Army was now back on top a second time. But - you're not going to be surprised by this - Army did nothing but win but once Ohio St beat Wisconsin, guess who was number one? That's correct, one-loss Ohio State. Who had lost to SMU who had lost to Texas who had lost to Oklahoma, who hadn't lost in 29 games going back to 1948. But then Ohio State lost to Illinois - amusingly one of the five teams in the top 20 who got ZERO first-place votes - and Oklahoma FINALLY moved into the number one spot. The Sooners then crushed both Nebraska and Oklahoma A/M (now OK State) and completed their season undefeated for the second year in a row. Oklahoma added 40 first-place votes to their 173 prior to the final two games, and the Sooners dynasty was finally validated with their first national championship. The UP agreed, OU getting 32 of 35 votes.
4) And then there were the bowl games so....
Since this wasn't 1964 Alabama, there was no real controversy. Oklahoma made out like bandits, and given what happened in 1949, they should have no shame in celebrating. But then came the bowl games that Notre Dame wouldn't play and the Big Ten would only play one. OU wound up in the Sugar Bowl against Paul Bryant's Kentucky Wildcats, who gave the Sooners their first loss since the 1948 opener in a stunning 13-7 victory. After the final poll vote, Army validated the voters not picking them when the Knights lost the annual Army-Navy game to a 3-6 forgettable team. So Kentucky is the champion, right?
Not so fast my friend. Kentucky lost to Tennessee, the only decent team they played prior to OU. UK's schedule conveniently avoided the other SEC powers like Alabama and Tulane, not that anyone planned it this way. The question is this: is Tennessee's 7-0 loss on the road to 4-5 Mississippi State SO BAD that it flips Kentucky's 7-0 loss to Tennessee into a national title?
A four-team playoff in 1950 very likely consists of:
Oklahoma, Tennessee, California
......and one other team.....either Army, Princeton, Texas, Kentucky, or Michigan State. The PROBABLE choice in this group would be either Texas or Kentucky (Texas's only loss was to Oklahoma by one point.
There are two legitimate contenders here, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Oklahoma completed the REGULAR SEASON undefeated. Does Tennessee beat the Sooners as UK did? Maybe. But the bottom line was that OU played an acceptable schedule, had a long enough streak, dominated opponents, and got screwed in 1949 because they weren't Notre Dame. Besides, the voters probably figured they could just do for Tennessee in 1951 as they did for Oklahoma in 1950.
And, in fact, that's exactly what happened.
*** - I should note that although Michigan St was NOT YET a full-fledged member of the Big Ten, they have already been voted into membership that was set to begin in 1954. You'll notice that the closer we get to 1954, the more Michigan St begins getting treated by pollsters with "Big Ten privilege."
National champion: Oklahoma 9-0
Undefeated teams:#2 Army 8-0, #7 Princeton 9-0, #12 Wyoming
Undefeated teams with ties: #5 Cal 9-0-1, #15 8-0-1 Miami
UP Champion: Oklahoma
1) Introducing......the United Press poll......
On June 18, 1945, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that would alter the course of college football history despite the case having literally nothing to do with college football. On that day, the Court determined that the Associated Press conglomerate of news organizations had violated the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890.
At the time of the ruling, the AP consisted of over 1200 newspapers in all 48 states that despite using local reporters with their own version of telling the news had, since 1900, been a cooperative news arm where despite this local bent, the AP could sanction or even expel members who violated their by-laws. There were only two groups that were even remotely competitive with the AP - the United Press and the International News Service. These three groups combined contributed (in 1945) to all but 7 daily morning newspapers in the USA. What eventually happened (in layman's terms) is that the AP got other groups to agree not to sue them or their papers in exchange for the AP taking their side...and when you pretty much control 96% of the newspapers in that pre-television time, it's not hard to see what would happen. The AP lost the case...and as a consequence, the UP decided to conduct THEIR OWN football poll. And with that one decision based on the other one, it was bound to get out of hand.
So, of course, the Associated Press decided to counter with....
2) Introducing.....the first-ever Associated Press PRE-SEASON poll......
In the "you set my dumpster on fire, therefore, I will set your house on fire" department, the AP retaliated with their own means of setting the narrative...the pre-season poll, which they'd never done. But to show you how bad this could be, all you really have to know is that 121 voters submitted first-place votes on behalf of the teams in the first AP poll Top Ten while 322 submitted ballots in the final count. To show the madness was just beginning, no fewer than FIFTEEN of the final TOP 20 teams had a first-place vote, including two votes for 6-2-1 Nebraska, one for 8-2 Alabama and - stunning as this may sound - two for 8-2 Washington and Lee. It's almost as though the AP, who went from 218 final ballots to 322, wanted to use their superior numbers to overwhelm the UP. The UP - which was basically a vote of 35 college football coaches - didn't publish a poll until after the end of the regular season but - like the AP - BEFORE the bowl games. In all honesty, they could have gained more momentum by counting the bowls.
It's almost as though the AP was attempting to strangle the UP in the cradle. Assure your papers cover your poll and move it back prior to the season and build momentum for your teams...there's a certain level of karma that nowadays, the COACH'S POLL (which is what the old UP is now) is more revered than the AP poll is.
3) OK, so did the twin polls get the right national champion?
After screwing Oklahoma in 1949, the polls seem to have said to themselves, "OK (SWIDT?), we'll let you have one so this new poll doesn't pick someone else and cause us a problem." But we should also note that the old "East Coast bias" problem was mostly mitigated by on-the-field results. Notre Dame - and you can win a trivia contest with this one - was the first AP pre-season number one. But though there were pre-season polls, they then suspended release of the first regular season poll until after every team played a game. Notre Dame held on for a week and then lost to Purdue en route to a 4-4-1 debacle under Frank Leahy. But the early results saw Michigan St pole vault the field - beating Oregon St and then knocking off #2 Michigan. It's always amazing to me how the same pollsters will say "Oregon St is no good" but apparently was good enough coupled with an overrated Michigan (pardon the redundancy) to blast Sparty all the way to number two. But Sparty lost a 27-point blowout to Maryland and you have to remember one key point - Sparty WAS NOT IN THE BIG TEN at the time. They didn't have "East Coast Mafia protection" when they lost if I may slightly exaggerate here.***
Army rose to the top. Why? Well, they beat the same Michigan team that Sparty beat, so obviously Army was good. But as Michigan slumped, SMU's win over Ohio St miraculously turned the Mustangs in the top team in the nation where.........they lost to Texas. So Army was now back on top a second time. But - you're not going to be surprised by this - Army did nothing but win but once Ohio St beat Wisconsin, guess who was number one? That's correct, one-loss Ohio State. Who had lost to SMU who had lost to Texas who had lost to Oklahoma, who hadn't lost in 29 games going back to 1948. But then Ohio State lost to Illinois - amusingly one of the five teams in the top 20 who got ZERO first-place votes - and Oklahoma FINALLY moved into the number one spot. The Sooners then crushed both Nebraska and Oklahoma A/M (now OK State) and completed their season undefeated for the second year in a row. Oklahoma added 40 first-place votes to their 173 prior to the final two games, and the Sooners dynasty was finally validated with their first national championship. The UP agreed, OU getting 32 of 35 votes.
4) And then there were the bowl games so....
Since this wasn't 1964 Alabama, there was no real controversy. Oklahoma made out like bandits, and given what happened in 1949, they should have no shame in celebrating. But then came the bowl games that Notre Dame wouldn't play and the Big Ten would only play one. OU wound up in the Sugar Bowl against Paul Bryant's Kentucky Wildcats, who gave the Sooners their first loss since the 1948 opener in a stunning 13-7 victory. After the final poll vote, Army validated the voters not picking them when the Knights lost the annual Army-Navy game to a 3-6 forgettable team. So Kentucky is the champion, right?
Not so fast my friend. Kentucky lost to Tennessee, the only decent team they played prior to OU. UK's schedule conveniently avoided the other SEC powers like Alabama and Tulane, not that anyone planned it this way. The question is this: is Tennessee's 7-0 loss on the road to 4-5 Mississippi State SO BAD that it flips Kentucky's 7-0 loss to Tennessee into a national title?
A four-team playoff in 1950 very likely consists of:
Oklahoma, Tennessee, California
......and one other team.....either Army, Princeton, Texas, Kentucky, or Michigan State. The PROBABLE choice in this group would be either Texas or Kentucky (Texas's only loss was to Oklahoma by one point.
There are two legitimate contenders here, Oklahoma and Tennessee. Oklahoma completed the REGULAR SEASON undefeated. Does Tennessee beat the Sooners as UK did? Maybe. But the bottom line was that OU played an acceptable schedule, had a long enough streak, dominated opponents, and got screwed in 1949 because they weren't Notre Dame. Besides, the voters probably figured they could just do for Tennessee in 1951 as they did for Oklahoma in 1950.
And, in fact, that's exactly what happened.
*** - I should note that although Michigan St was NOT YET a full-fledged member of the Big Ten, they have already been voted into membership that was set to begin in 1954. You'll notice that the closer we get to 1954, the more Michigan St begins getting treated by pollsters with "Big Ten privilege."
Last edited:
1951 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Tennessee 10-0
Undefeated teams:#2 Michigan St 9-0,#3 Maryland 9-0, #6 Princeton 9-0, #14 USF 9-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #4 Illinois 8-0-1,#5 Georgia Tech 10-0-1
UP Champion: Tennessee
1) Play it again....
It damn near happened again...and if Michigan State had been a member of the Big Ten as they became in 1954, there is no question how this vote would have turned out. The patterns we continue to observe continue to show up from vote to vote.
- Michigan State is the pre-season number one in 1951
- Tennessee starts at 2, wins and picks up 9 first-place votes and drops to 3rd
- The Vols move up to #1 but without losing a game get dropped when Michigan St routs Notre Dame
- Michigan St narrowly beats a horrible Indiana team and the next week, Stanford loses - and the votes push towards Knoxville
- this time "only" 14 teams have first-place votes in the final poll
- some of these votes are AGAIN insane; Boston University winds up ranked with a 6-4 record when TWO voters give them first-place votes
- sure enough, the Vols lose the bowl game to Maryland......so, they're the real number one, right??
2) Did the right team win the national championship?
Well...if you hold to the "they got screwed so let's fix it" theory then yes.
But the pollsters were about to make it up to both teams - Michigan St wins the title in 1952 and Maryland in 1953. And yet another Southeastern Conference team is going to get royally screwed.
There are TWO legitimate claims on 1951, Tennessee and Maryland, who beat the Vols head-to-head in the bowl game. Maryland by that count is more deserving, but let's be honest: no SEC team had ever won the AP title and in all honesty the Vols PROBABLY only won the title because:
a) Michigan State was not yet in the Big Ten
b) Maryland, Illinois, and Michigan State split the vote enough for the Vols to win.
Look at the final tally:
1) Tennessee, 139
2) Michigan St, 104,
3) Maryland, 18
4) Illinois, 10
If the vote had coalesced around ONE unbeaten competitor, the Vols probably would have lost. Imagine if the Maryland and Illinois voters threw in with Sparty:
1) Tennessee, 139
2) Michigan St, 132
I'd have to know the other positions of the other votes, but that alone PROBABLY would have given Michigan State the title.
3) But why not....
There's an argument to be made for Michigan State, but it's not much of one. In fact, it boils down to, "but they started at number one and oh yeah, they beat Notre Dame and Michigan!" But Michigan wasn't any good in 1951 as events subsequently proved - but not until after Stanford also transferred the alleged goodness of Michigan into a high ranking themselves.
4) But you have to win your conference championship....
Amazingly enough, Tennessee won the national title without winning the conference...because Georgia Tech played more conference games. Maybe the modern dolts who insist on this need to....you know, go look at the whole thing.
National champion: Tennessee 10-0
Undefeated teams:#2 Michigan St 9-0,#3 Maryland 9-0, #6 Princeton 9-0, #14 USF 9-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #4 Illinois 8-0-1,#5 Georgia Tech 10-0-1
UP Champion: Tennessee
1) Play it again....
It damn near happened again...and if Michigan State had been a member of the Big Ten as they became in 1954, there is no question how this vote would have turned out. The patterns we continue to observe continue to show up from vote to vote.
- Michigan State is the pre-season number one in 1951
- Tennessee starts at 2, wins and picks up 9 first-place votes and drops to 3rd
- The Vols move up to #1 but without losing a game get dropped when Michigan St routs Notre Dame
- Michigan St narrowly beats a horrible Indiana team and the next week, Stanford loses - and the votes push towards Knoxville
- this time "only" 14 teams have first-place votes in the final poll
- some of these votes are AGAIN insane; Boston University winds up ranked with a 6-4 record when TWO voters give them first-place votes
- sure enough, the Vols lose the bowl game to Maryland......so, they're the real number one, right??
2) Did the right team win the national championship?
Well...if you hold to the "they got screwed so let's fix it" theory then yes.
But the pollsters were about to make it up to both teams - Michigan St wins the title in 1952 and Maryland in 1953. And yet another Southeastern Conference team is going to get royally screwed.
There are TWO legitimate claims on 1951, Tennessee and Maryland, who beat the Vols head-to-head in the bowl game. Maryland by that count is more deserving, but let's be honest: no SEC team had ever won the AP title and in all honesty the Vols PROBABLY only won the title because:
a) Michigan State was not yet in the Big Ten
b) Maryland, Illinois, and Michigan State split the vote enough for the Vols to win.
Look at the final tally:
1) Tennessee, 139
2) Michigan St, 104,
3) Maryland, 18
4) Illinois, 10
If the vote had coalesced around ONE unbeaten competitor, the Vols probably would have lost. Imagine if the Maryland and Illinois voters threw in with Sparty:
1) Tennessee, 139
2) Michigan St, 132
I'd have to know the other positions of the other votes, but that alone PROBABLY would have given Michigan State the title.
3) But why not....
There's an argument to be made for Michigan State, but it's not much of one. In fact, it boils down to, "but they started at number one and oh yeah, they beat Notre Dame and Michigan!" But Michigan wasn't any good in 1951 as events subsequently proved - but not until after Stanford also transferred the alleged goodness of Michigan into a high ranking themselves.
4) But you have to win your conference championship....
Amazingly enough, Tennessee won the national title without winning the conference...because Georgia Tech played more conference games. Maybe the modern dolts who insist on this need to....you know, go look at the whole thing.
1952 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Michigan St 9-0
Undefeated teams:#2 Georgia Tech 11-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #7 Ole Miss 8-0-2
UP Champion: Michigan St
1) "Alex, the answer is TWO YEARS."
And the "Jeopardy" question is, "How close does a team have to be to joining the Big 9 to turn it back into the Big 10 to provide that team with Big 10 AP Voter Bias Protection?" As in 1951, Michigan St was the pre-season #1. Unlike 1951, the Spartans came home with a national title. How "deserved" this title is will be the subject of scrutiny because there's a good argument to be made for Georgia Tech, whose only sin was they played ball South of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Starting in 1924, Michigan St began pounding at the gates of the Big Ten wanting membership (as Notre Dame had been doing for years). The Western Conference wasn't interested in expansion, and with Michigan being the Big Dog, there was no chance of it happening. But in 1946, the University of Chicago decided to "focus more on academics", which is quitter-speak for, "Since we can't win ballgames anyway." Have you ever noticed that NEVER does a SUCCESSFUL team suddenly announce, "We need to return to academics," but I digress. This gave an opening for an invitation and three teams were in the running from day one: Michigan State, Nebraska, and Pitt. Had television been in 1949 what it was by 1999, Pitt would have been the likely choice. Iowa was begging for Nebraska, both to open up a Cornfield Rivalry (that no doubt would have eventually been sponsored by 'Hee-Haw') and to deep six Iowa State. Nebraska wanted to flee Oklahoma's dominance, and joining the Big Ten in 1949 was about like being invited to the SEC was in 2011 - the homecoming queen is offering you free sex, you go.
There was a huge in-conference debate. Michigan didn't want Sparty for obvious reasons. But Minnesota and Ohio St were also opposed, figuring that Sparty in the house would lower the prestige of their games with the Wolverines. But the President of Michigan St was a longtime friend of the President of Minnesota and won him over, and the conference eventually voted 9-0 to accept Sparty beginning with the 1954 season. Much of their selection had to do with the fact that Michigan was contending year-in, year-out (thus, you know this was a long time ago), and Michigan St in conference would drastically cut into Michigan's power base. They turned out to be right, too. Sparty has won more national titles in football than UM has since 1949 despite being a MUCH lesser name.
2) And the trend continues.....part 1
Once again, a team that could argue "we got hosed last year" won a national title the following year. This amazing circumstance would continue.
3) And the trend continues...part 2
Once again, the Northern/East Coast bias of the polls rears it's ugly head not once but twice. First, let's look at the pre-season poll:
1) Michigan St (77)
2) Maryland (79)
3) Georgia Tech (15)
4) Oklahoma (16)
5) Illinois (7)
6) Tennessee (5)
7) Wisconsin (4)
8) Cal (2)
9) TCU (1)
10) Notre Dame
The first regular season poll comes on September 29 and gives us:
1) Michigan State at number one, thanks to beating what turns out to be a 5-4 overrated Michigan squad.
2) Illinois jumping from 5 to 2 based on their win over 3-6 Iowa State
3) Maryland dropping to 3rd due to narrow wins over two teams with lousy records, Mizzou and Auburn
4) Cal ranked 4th with a win over Pacific and a much more impressive win over Mizzou than Maryland had
5) Texas at 5 with wins over lousy LSU and UNC teams
6) GT falling to 6th after a blowout win over the Citadel and a solid one over an 8-3 Florida team
7) Tennessee - the defending champs - dropping from 6 to 11 after a close win against a middling MSU team.
You'll see this every time - an Eastern/Midwestern team barely wins and it's "but they won"; a Southern team wins closer than expected, "well, they're not very good." This can easily be substantiated by simply taking notes on who drops how far with similar performances.
So what happens next? Illinois jumps to #2, Wisconsin beats them and WISCONSIN JUMPS EVERYONE and goes to #1. Yes, a team ranked 8th beats #2 on a day when #1 wins a closer than expected game on the road against 2-7 Oregon St, Ga Tech crushes SMU, Cal becomes the second PCC team in two weeks to beat Minnesota (Big 10), and Maryland crushes Clemson.....and #8 pole vaults them all to #1. The following week - just to show logic isn't the strong suit - Wisky loses to Ohio State and yet is ranked above them in the AP poll despite having the same 2-1 record and 9-point win - 4 places higher in fact.
So Michigan St reverts back to #1. They hold on to the end of the year and win their first national championship of the AP poll era. Georgia Tech - with two extra games and a tougher schedule - finishes second in both polls and gets slapped across the face by the UP, with 32 coaches voting Sparty on top and Tech getting ONE....ONE vote, which is as many as Notre Dame and Oklahoma got. Tech joined the list of SEC teams who ran the table and went home with no hardware, the tenth time in 16 years this had happened.
But that's nothing. Go look at the final poll and you will see things that will boggle your mind. Again, Michigan State is DEFENSIBLE as champion, yes. After all, they've won 24 games in a row, and while their schedule in 1952 wasn't quite that of Tech, it was still good. Plus - they had the ace in the hole when they beat Notre Dame.
When the final poll came in, 7-2-1 Notre Dame wound up third. Yes, they had an 18-point loss to Sparty and a tie with 4-3-1 Penn (folks, Penn was a MUCH bigger name than Penn State in 1952), and a loss to 6-3 Pitt. But they also had some great wins - including giving Texas one of their two losses and Oklahoma the only loss the Sooners had AND the only loss that USC had. And this was Notre Dame in a nutshell - they could beat 3 of 4 teams in the Top Ten but lose to two teams they should massacre.
4) Yes, there IS bias, but....
I note that YES, the polls definitely have a built-in fault for the Big 10 and Eastern-based teams. HOWEVER, those teams are still accomplishing what is necessary to substantiate to a reasonable voter, "Yes, this is the best team."
5) Did the right team win the national championship?
Once again, the choice of Sparty is absolutely DEFENSIBLE, and I may be asking the wrong question. Maybe I should be asking whether the WRONG team won the national championship, which Sparty was not. However, things are about to change - and quickly. Starting in 1953, Southern-based teams are suddenly about to dominate the national championship picture for the next 13 years. After a brief regression due largely to Southern-based schools refusing to integrate, Southern teams are about to step forward and (for the most part) OWN the game of college football. Three things will be necessary to bring this about: 1) beating Northern teams in head-to-head contests; 2) shrinking the size of the AP poll to the point that geographic block voting becomes easier to control; and 3) a split national championship caused by the UP selecting aa different champion than the AP. As it turned out, this last would occur first - in 1954.
National champion: Michigan St 9-0
Undefeated teams:#2 Georgia Tech 11-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #7 Ole Miss 8-0-2
UP Champion: Michigan St
1) "Alex, the answer is TWO YEARS."
And the "Jeopardy" question is, "How close does a team have to be to joining the Big 9 to turn it back into the Big 10 to provide that team with Big 10 AP Voter Bias Protection?" As in 1951, Michigan St was the pre-season #1. Unlike 1951, the Spartans came home with a national title. How "deserved" this title is will be the subject of scrutiny because there's a good argument to be made for Georgia Tech, whose only sin was they played ball South of the Mason-Dixon Line.
Starting in 1924, Michigan St began pounding at the gates of the Big Ten wanting membership (as Notre Dame had been doing for years). The Western Conference wasn't interested in expansion, and with Michigan being the Big Dog, there was no chance of it happening. But in 1946, the University of Chicago decided to "focus more on academics", which is quitter-speak for, "Since we can't win ballgames anyway." Have you ever noticed that NEVER does a SUCCESSFUL team suddenly announce, "We need to return to academics," but I digress. This gave an opening for an invitation and three teams were in the running from day one: Michigan State, Nebraska, and Pitt. Had television been in 1949 what it was by 1999, Pitt would have been the likely choice. Iowa was begging for Nebraska, both to open up a Cornfield Rivalry (that no doubt would have eventually been sponsored by 'Hee-Haw') and to deep six Iowa State. Nebraska wanted to flee Oklahoma's dominance, and joining the Big Ten in 1949 was about like being invited to the SEC was in 2011 - the homecoming queen is offering you free sex, you go.
There was a huge in-conference debate. Michigan didn't want Sparty for obvious reasons. But Minnesota and Ohio St were also opposed, figuring that Sparty in the house would lower the prestige of their games with the Wolverines. But the President of Michigan St was a longtime friend of the President of Minnesota and won him over, and the conference eventually voted 9-0 to accept Sparty beginning with the 1954 season. Much of their selection had to do with the fact that Michigan was contending year-in, year-out (thus, you know this was a long time ago), and Michigan St in conference would drastically cut into Michigan's power base. They turned out to be right, too. Sparty has won more national titles in football than UM has since 1949 despite being a MUCH lesser name.
2) And the trend continues.....part 1
Once again, a team that could argue "we got hosed last year" won a national title the following year. This amazing circumstance would continue.
3) And the trend continues...part 2
Once again, the Northern/East Coast bias of the polls rears it's ugly head not once but twice. First, let's look at the pre-season poll:
1) Michigan St (77)
2) Maryland (79)
3) Georgia Tech (15)
4) Oklahoma (16)
5) Illinois (7)
6) Tennessee (5)
7) Wisconsin (4)
8) Cal (2)
9) TCU (1)
10) Notre Dame
The first regular season poll comes on September 29 and gives us:
1) Michigan State at number one, thanks to beating what turns out to be a 5-4 overrated Michigan squad.
2) Illinois jumping from 5 to 2 based on their win over 3-6 Iowa State
3) Maryland dropping to 3rd due to narrow wins over two teams with lousy records, Mizzou and Auburn
4) Cal ranked 4th with a win over Pacific and a much more impressive win over Mizzou than Maryland had
5) Texas at 5 with wins over lousy LSU and UNC teams
6) GT falling to 6th after a blowout win over the Citadel and a solid one over an 8-3 Florida team
7) Tennessee - the defending champs - dropping from 6 to 11 after a close win against a middling MSU team.
You'll see this every time - an Eastern/Midwestern team barely wins and it's "but they won"; a Southern team wins closer than expected, "well, they're not very good." This can easily be substantiated by simply taking notes on who drops how far with similar performances.
So what happens next? Illinois jumps to #2, Wisconsin beats them and WISCONSIN JUMPS EVERYONE and goes to #1. Yes, a team ranked 8th beats #2 on a day when #1 wins a closer than expected game on the road against 2-7 Oregon St, Ga Tech crushes SMU, Cal becomes the second PCC team in two weeks to beat Minnesota (Big 10), and Maryland crushes Clemson.....and #8 pole vaults them all to #1. The following week - just to show logic isn't the strong suit - Wisky loses to Ohio State and yet is ranked above them in the AP poll despite having the same 2-1 record and 9-point win - 4 places higher in fact.
So Michigan St reverts back to #1. They hold on to the end of the year and win their first national championship of the AP poll era. Georgia Tech - with two extra games and a tougher schedule - finishes second in both polls and gets slapped across the face by the UP, with 32 coaches voting Sparty on top and Tech getting ONE....ONE vote, which is as many as Notre Dame and Oklahoma got. Tech joined the list of SEC teams who ran the table and went home with no hardware, the tenth time in 16 years this had happened.
But that's nothing. Go look at the final poll and you will see things that will boggle your mind. Again, Michigan State is DEFENSIBLE as champion, yes. After all, they've won 24 games in a row, and while their schedule in 1952 wasn't quite that of Tech, it was still good. Plus - they had the ace in the hole when they beat Notre Dame.
When the final poll came in, 7-2-1 Notre Dame wound up third. Yes, they had an 18-point loss to Sparty and a tie with 4-3-1 Penn (folks, Penn was a MUCH bigger name than Penn State in 1952), and a loss to 6-3 Pitt. But they also had some great wins - including giving Texas one of their two losses and Oklahoma the only loss the Sooners had AND the only loss that USC had. And this was Notre Dame in a nutshell - they could beat 3 of 4 teams in the Top Ten but lose to two teams they should massacre.
4) Yes, there IS bias, but....
I note that YES, the polls definitely have a built-in fault for the Big 10 and Eastern-based teams. HOWEVER, those teams are still accomplishing what is necessary to substantiate to a reasonable voter, "Yes, this is the best team."
5) Did the right team win the national championship?
Once again, the choice of Sparty is absolutely DEFENSIBLE, and I may be asking the wrong question. Maybe I should be asking whether the WRONG team won the national championship, which Sparty was not. However, things are about to change - and quickly. Starting in 1953, Southern-based teams are suddenly about to dominate the national championship picture for the next 13 years. After a brief regression due largely to Southern-based schools refusing to integrate, Southern teams are about to step forward and (for the most part) OWN the game of college football. Three things will be necessary to bring this about: 1) beating Northern teams in head-to-head contests; 2) shrinking the size of the AP poll to the point that geographic block voting becomes easier to control; and 3) a split national championship caused by the UP selecting aa different champion than the AP. As it turned out, this last would occur first - in 1954.
A note about national championships and polls.
It should already be obvious WHY the AP poll became the most prestigious poll in the country; when you control what is printed (to a large degree) in 96% of the nation's newspapers at a time when television is still in its infancy, everyone knows you and doesn't know everyone else. I'm not alleging a conspiracy because one was not necessary. When a school was selected in early February (in some cases) as the NFF national champion, interest in the game had moved to basketball or other pursuits, and the AP was under no obligation to carry the story. If Georgia Tech wins the INS championship poll in 1952 (which, in fact, they did), well, nothing obligates the AP to carry the story. So the Georgia markets will carry it, but a number of local newspapers in Montana or out West could care less. The ones in Michigan might decide to do so (since it was, in fact, a co-championship), but the ones in Ohio might not mention it. INS was not as big as AP, and it would take their consolidation with the UP to change perceptions.
The other note regards national championships - again.
We should credit both Alan Gould AND the AP with doing what could not have been done without them - manufacturing controversy that manufactures interest in the sport. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. I know this becomes me intruding on someone's religious belief (to be blunt about it) when it involves these things, but given the demonstrable bias of human polls, the emphasis given on titles IN THAT ERA is probably highly misplaced. Another person who has to be given his due for his emphasis on THE NATIONAL championship is, without a doubt, Paul Bryant. If we look at the development of college ball, it began with being superior in your own state and then progressed to being the best in your region/conference. Eventually, the big thing was whether you went to the Rose Bowl (Big 10 or PCC/10/12) or won your bowl game back when there wasn't an alphabet soup of post-season games. But Bryant walked onto the UA campus and said the words "national championship" and focused on it probably more than any coach in the pre-1970s era. Most schools didn't aim for that because so much depended on factors beyond the control of one particular team. One could argue that the success of Bryant disciples - including Danny Ford (1981), Howard Schnellenberger (1983), and Gene Stallings (1992) plus Pat Dye and Jackie Sherrill (with very close calls) - elevated the national championship to something all teams could aspire to attain. Plus, a series of what were called national championship matchups - 1984 Orange Bowl, 1987 Fiesta Bowl - that were all-time classics flipped the perception that a champion had to be settled on the field.
I'm not saying no coach before Bryant ever uttered the focus on a national championship; but I am saying you would be hard-pressed to find one who emphasized it to the point he did and then sent out imitators who won some themselves.
It should already be obvious WHY the AP poll became the most prestigious poll in the country; when you control what is printed (to a large degree) in 96% of the nation's newspapers at a time when television is still in its infancy, everyone knows you and doesn't know everyone else. I'm not alleging a conspiracy because one was not necessary. When a school was selected in early February (in some cases) as the NFF national champion, interest in the game had moved to basketball or other pursuits, and the AP was under no obligation to carry the story. If Georgia Tech wins the INS championship poll in 1952 (which, in fact, they did), well, nothing obligates the AP to carry the story. So the Georgia markets will carry it, but a number of local newspapers in Montana or out West could care less. The ones in Michigan might decide to do so (since it was, in fact, a co-championship), but the ones in Ohio might not mention it. INS was not as big as AP, and it would take their consolidation with the UP to change perceptions.
The other note regards national championships - again.
We should credit both Alan Gould AND the AP with doing what could not have been done without them - manufacturing controversy that manufactures interest in the sport. He succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. I know this becomes me intruding on someone's religious belief (to be blunt about it) when it involves these things, but given the demonstrable bias of human polls, the emphasis given on titles IN THAT ERA is probably highly misplaced. Another person who has to be given his due for his emphasis on THE NATIONAL championship is, without a doubt, Paul Bryant. If we look at the development of college ball, it began with being superior in your own state and then progressed to being the best in your region/conference. Eventually, the big thing was whether you went to the Rose Bowl (Big 10 or PCC/10/12) or won your bowl game back when there wasn't an alphabet soup of post-season games. But Bryant walked onto the UA campus and said the words "national championship" and focused on it probably more than any coach in the pre-1970s era. Most schools didn't aim for that because so much depended on factors beyond the control of one particular team. One could argue that the success of Bryant disciples - including Danny Ford (1981), Howard Schnellenberger (1983), and Gene Stallings (1992) plus Pat Dye and Jackie Sherrill (with very close calls) - elevated the national championship to something all teams could aspire to attain. Plus, a series of what were called national championship matchups - 1984 Orange Bowl, 1987 Fiesta Bowl - that were all-time classics flipped the perception that a champion had to be settled on the field.
I'm not saying no coach before Bryant ever uttered the focus on a national championship; but I am saying you would be hard-pressed to find one who emphasized it to the point he did and then sent out imitators who won some themselves.
1953 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Maryland 10-0
Undefeated teams with ties:#2Notre Dame 8-0-1
UP Champion: Maryland
1) Years don't come any easier than this one.
You had one major unbeaten and - oh yeah - there was some legitimate "we got hosed" from 1951. Of course...
2) You'll never hear anyone trashing Alabama's 1964 title bring this one up but...
So in 1950 Oklahoma loses the bowl games after winning the national title.
And in 1951, Tennessee does the same thing.
And in 1953, Maryland does the same thing, losing to Oklahoma.
3) Yes, Notre Dame might.....MIGHT....win a post-bowl poll.
But right here, folks, is where the analogy falls apart. "Well Maryland lost their bowl game to Oklahoma, whose only loss was to Notre Dame and THEREFORE, Notre Dame should be number one."
Well, I would agree with that...except I have a serious problem punishing Maryland for losing a bowl game while simultaneously rewarding Notre Dame for refusing to play one. You simply cannot have this argument both ways. Maryland played TWO additional games, and they lost the last one. Notre Dame sat their asses safely at home as they would do until 1970, so rewarding a team that didn't play by punishing a team that did simply isn't going to happen in my world.
Yes - Notre Dame probably wins a post-bowl poll. But if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas, too.
4) Did the right team win the national championship?
No. The selection of Maryland in 1953 revealed some of the structural flaws inherent in deciding national titles by pre-bowl polling. Maryland won the national title for one reason - and ONLY one - because Maryland was the SOLE unbeaten and untied team left standing at the end of the season and FOR NO OTHER REASON. This title ranks right alongside 1984 BYU as being among the most egregious selections of all-time. It's not that Maryland was not a good team, they were. Their record over the three seasons of 1951-53 (prior to losing to Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl) was an eye-popping 27-2. But their schedule is absolutely littered with the riff-raff of college football schedules, including four total wins over George Washington and Washington and Lee as well as running the table twice in an absolutely horrid ACC (sound familiar to anyone?) that had only three other ranked teams total in those three years, Duke twice and Clemson once.
Of course, Maryland DID absolutely sledgehammer the SEC of the time frame, compiling an 8-2 record (pausing for a moment for everyone to realize that YES, their two losses were to SEC teams in those three years). In fact, it largely JUSTIFIES the conclusions of the sportswriters of the time - that Southern football was NOT on a part with the North and East, regardless of whatever attendant bias may have existed. Maryland played eight total games out of 30 against teams with 7 or more wins, and they were 5-3, which suggests they were pretty good but hardly at the elite level.
5) So why did Maryland win the championship then?
Because, quite frankly, Notre Dame cost themselves both with a tie against ranked Iowa AND their actions during the game, which led to a rules change.
Notre Dame played Iowa on November 21, 1953, in South Bend, and despite gaining 358 yards (an utterly phenomenal total for the time), a truckload of turnovers, mistakes (including dropping a touchdown pass), and their actions to preserve the tie (again - sound familiar?) actually led to a rare case of blistering the Irish from coast to coast, led by the pre-eminent sportswriter of the time, Grantland Rice.
With two minutes left in the game and trailing, 14-7, the Irish had no timeouts and were desperate. On each play coming up the field, a different Irish player would pretend to "be injured" and stop the clock, enabling the Irish to set up and run plays without calling their nonexistent timeouts. With six seconds left in the game, Notre Dame hit a touchdown pass - enabled by their fake injuries - and kicked the point afterwards to end the game in a tie. (For those who are wondering, "why didn't they go for two," the 2-point conversion did not become a rule until 1958. As much as I'd like to rip the Irish for a tie, that was their only hope).
To be fair to Notre Dame, their tactics were quite common in the football of the era. But Notre Dame, you see, had been built up for over 30 years as some sort of "academics first" university that "plays athletics fairly, the way they should be" and "was the best of America" and any other cliché you desire to use. And this brought forth a loud fury from writers who suddenly felt cheated, much like baseball writers of a later time - all of whom HAD to know players were using performance-enhancing drugs - suddenly trashing the players who used them as though gaining any edge possible was something new. Several writers - and the AP - referred to Notre Dame as the "Fainting Irish," and the name stuck long enough to cost them the national championship. To make matters worse, Irish Coach Frank Leahy stayed in South Bend the next week as the Irish went to beat USC in Los Angeles, 48-14. The rumored reason was "health problems," but many in the press felt it was extreme cowardice and fear he'd get asked about the Fainting Irish in an interview. He may also have hoped his absence would lead to inspirational stories when the Irish blew the Trojans off the field, but he was mistaken.
In the end, Coach Bryant's maxim was again proven true - "nobody wins a football game, somebody loses it." In this case, Notre Dame lost the national title far more than Maryland won it.
Maryland had gotten their mulligan for 1951, when they ran the table and knocked off #1. But the stage was now set for the first publicly split national title of the AP poll era in 1954.
National champion: Maryland 10-0
Undefeated teams with ties:#2Notre Dame 8-0-1
UP Champion: Maryland
1) Years don't come any easier than this one.
You had one major unbeaten and - oh yeah - there was some legitimate "we got hosed" from 1951. Of course...
2) You'll never hear anyone trashing Alabama's 1964 title bring this one up but...
So in 1950 Oklahoma loses the bowl games after winning the national title.
And in 1951, Tennessee does the same thing.
And in 1953, Maryland does the same thing, losing to Oklahoma.
3) Yes, Notre Dame might.....MIGHT....win a post-bowl poll.
But right here, folks, is where the analogy falls apart. "Well Maryland lost their bowl game to Oklahoma, whose only loss was to Notre Dame and THEREFORE, Notre Dame should be number one."
Well, I would agree with that...except I have a serious problem punishing Maryland for losing a bowl game while simultaneously rewarding Notre Dame for refusing to play one. You simply cannot have this argument both ways. Maryland played TWO additional games, and they lost the last one. Notre Dame sat their asses safely at home as they would do until 1970, so rewarding a team that didn't play by punishing a team that did simply isn't going to happen in my world.
Yes - Notre Dame probably wins a post-bowl poll. But if ifs and buts were candy and nuts, we'd all have a Merry Christmas, too.
4) Did the right team win the national championship?
No. The selection of Maryland in 1953 revealed some of the structural flaws inherent in deciding national titles by pre-bowl polling. Maryland won the national title for one reason - and ONLY one - because Maryland was the SOLE unbeaten and untied team left standing at the end of the season and FOR NO OTHER REASON. This title ranks right alongside 1984 BYU as being among the most egregious selections of all-time. It's not that Maryland was not a good team, they were. Their record over the three seasons of 1951-53 (prior to losing to Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl) was an eye-popping 27-2. But their schedule is absolutely littered with the riff-raff of college football schedules, including four total wins over George Washington and Washington and Lee as well as running the table twice in an absolutely horrid ACC (sound familiar to anyone?) that had only three other ranked teams total in those three years, Duke twice and Clemson once.
Of course, Maryland DID absolutely sledgehammer the SEC of the time frame, compiling an 8-2 record (pausing for a moment for everyone to realize that YES, their two losses were to SEC teams in those three years). In fact, it largely JUSTIFIES the conclusions of the sportswriters of the time - that Southern football was NOT on a part with the North and East, regardless of whatever attendant bias may have existed. Maryland played eight total games out of 30 against teams with 7 or more wins, and they were 5-3, which suggests they were pretty good but hardly at the elite level.
5) So why did Maryland win the championship then?
Because, quite frankly, Notre Dame cost themselves both with a tie against ranked Iowa AND their actions during the game, which led to a rules change.
Notre Dame played Iowa on November 21, 1953, in South Bend, and despite gaining 358 yards (an utterly phenomenal total for the time), a truckload of turnovers, mistakes (including dropping a touchdown pass), and their actions to preserve the tie (again - sound familiar?) actually led to a rare case of blistering the Irish from coast to coast, led by the pre-eminent sportswriter of the time, Grantland Rice.
With two minutes left in the game and trailing, 14-7, the Irish had no timeouts and were desperate. On each play coming up the field, a different Irish player would pretend to "be injured" and stop the clock, enabling the Irish to set up and run plays without calling their nonexistent timeouts. With six seconds left in the game, Notre Dame hit a touchdown pass - enabled by their fake injuries - and kicked the point afterwards to end the game in a tie. (For those who are wondering, "why didn't they go for two," the 2-point conversion did not become a rule until 1958. As much as I'd like to rip the Irish for a tie, that was their only hope).
To be fair to Notre Dame, their tactics were quite common in the football of the era. But Notre Dame, you see, had been built up for over 30 years as some sort of "academics first" university that "plays athletics fairly, the way they should be" and "was the best of America" and any other cliché you desire to use. And this brought forth a loud fury from writers who suddenly felt cheated, much like baseball writers of a later time - all of whom HAD to know players were using performance-enhancing drugs - suddenly trashing the players who used them as though gaining any edge possible was something new. Several writers - and the AP - referred to Notre Dame as the "Fainting Irish," and the name stuck long enough to cost them the national championship. To make matters worse, Irish Coach Frank Leahy stayed in South Bend the next week as the Irish went to beat USC in Los Angeles, 48-14. The rumored reason was "health problems," but many in the press felt it was extreme cowardice and fear he'd get asked about the Fainting Irish in an interview. He may also have hoped his absence would lead to inspirational stories when the Irish blew the Trojans off the field, but he was mistaken.
In the end, Coach Bryant's maxim was again proven true - "nobody wins a football game, somebody loses it." In this case, Notre Dame lost the national title far more than Maryland won it.
Maryland had gotten their mulligan for 1951, when they ran the table and knocked off #1. But the stage was now set for the first publicly split national title of the AP poll era in 1954.
LOL, the "Fainting Irish"? That sounds familiar....
1954 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Ohio State 9-0
Undefeated teams:#2 UCLA 9-0, #3 Oklahoma 10-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #16 Va Tech 8-0-1
UP Champion: UCLA
We were "this close"...."this close"........to having an on-the-field national championship game for the first time in history, and the problems this would have caused might have actually expedited the playoff process rather than putting them in a 60-year delay. "If only" marks 1954.
1) The polling shows....
Let's get it out of the way right now - Ohio State was a damn fine football team in 1954. And so was UCLA. And thanks to the "no repeat" rule that prevented UCLA from facing Ohio State in the Rose Bowl (because UCLA had just gone the previous January), Ohio State wound up in a mud bath with USC and won, 20-7, the narrowness of which gave ammunition to Bruins fans who want to argue that THEY are the real champions of 1954. And quite frankly - using UCF logic - they ARE the deserving champions. Ironically, this whole thing happened because of (wait for it) a tie game that closed the 1953 football season. When Stanford and Cal finished in a tie to close the year, UCLA went from "going nowhere" to the Rose Bowl, where they lost a hard-fought contest against Michigan State, 28-20. That tie wound up costing the Bruins a chance for a head-to-head matchup with Ohio State, and oh boy would there have been a huge controversy had the Buckeyes lost to "the other champion" (UP) after both titles had been determined. The UP poll was released on November 29, and the Bruins got 21 of 35 first-place votes from the coaches, Ohio State got 11, and Notre Dame, Oklahoma, and Navy got one each. That's correct, 7-2 Navy got a first-place vote from the UP which is nothing; they got FOUR from the final AP poll, which wasn't even the most insane vote in the AP - 7-3 Auburn actually got a vote as well, which may not have been as bad as the 7 votes Miami got despite losing to Auburn.
Are you getting the idea some of these polls - at least down ballot - are flat out absurd???
2) And then there's Oklahoma..
From October 10, 1953 all the way until November 16, 1957 - an ENTIRE Presidential administration - the Oklahoma Sooners won a mind-boggling 47 games in a row. For all of the Alabama pouting about "the stole a three-peat from us," Oklahoma might have been the first. OU wound up third in 1954 and then won the next to national championships. But without sounding like I'm attacking a great accomplishment, it is not as though Oklahoma was winning 47 games against Top Ten teams. FORTY of their 47 wins came against teams with 6-4 records or worse; THIRTY-THREE came against teams with records of 5-5 or worse. In their entire run, Oklahoma beat exactly THREE teams with records of 8-2 or better - Maryland twice in bowl games and Colorado in 1956. And that Colorado team lost to 4-4-2 Oregon 35-0 AT HOME, so how good were they really?
Yes, Oklahoma won 47 games in a row - against largely a bunch of teams ill-equipped to compete with them. Texas was absolutely horrible in 1954-56, although they were good in 1953 and 1957. But Oklahoma's 47 games weren't as tough as Texas's four games in a row in October/November 2008, when they won 3 and lost the final one to Texas Tech, either. So yes, you can celebrate it, but consider it in the larger context. It's like saying 1939 Tennessee has the greatest defense ever because they never surrendered a point in the regular season.
3) And the fans, too....
Put ten college football fans in a room and you will get a dozen different opinions of the same subject. A controversy erupted, two of them, in fact. Both concerned UCLA, which was probably good for their program.
The first concerned outrage in both Los Angeles and Columbus that Ohio State and UCLA COULD NOT meet each other on the field of play. Both teams wanted a piece of each other, but the rules were the rules. As if that wasn't enough, however, the potential offer of playing a charity game with Oklahoma squaring off against UCLA to benefit the Olympic Games Fund (now the USOC) was tossed about and summarily rejected by UCLA's President, who had the good political sense to realize he was a member of a conference with rules in black and white they absolutely would not change and had agreed upon. Ohio State - well in 2020 anyway - not so much. And, of course, the high-level trolling and feigned outrage broke out along predictable lines. UCLA fans delighted in pointing out the entire problem was caused by the Big Ten insisting on the "no repeat" rule, and now they'd really messed themselves over. After all, if Ohio State won then all the West Coast fans had to do was say, "Yeah, against the second best team," but if Ohio State lost then the West Coast fans could say, "See, you're not that good anyway."
Few seemed bothered whether this would affect the national championship award in any way, though.
4) And the press..
The complaining began and rightly so. Writers across the country began expressing outrage at the system that enabled teams that had lost 3 (USC) and 4 (Nebraska) games to go play in exhibition bowl games because of inclusion rules. (There's something of an irony here - in this case, the sportswriters are AGAINST inclusion). And the first of many predictions that came to pass was made: television's growth was going to alter the course of the bowl games. The point was that YES, the games on-site might well be sold out even before the season began, but once all the games were televised nationwide, the "no repeat rule" would have go by the wayside else viewers of television shrink. It's probably no accident that the removal of all the "no repeat rule" clauses coincided with 8-3 Florida facing 8-3 Nebraska before a half empty Sugar Bowl stadium on December 31, 1974.
5) But did the right team win the national championship??
As a reminder, if UCLA had played and beaten Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, it would not have changed the already determined outcome of a split national championship. Under the circumstances, a split title is okay (
SWIDT?) but what about Oklahoma? And let's be clear about something - even if one agrees that the three teams listed should play in a four-team playoff, you have a different problem: which team is the fourth team?
8-1 Notre Dame (a 13-point loss to 5-3-1 Purdue, who got drilled by Ohio St)
9-1 Ole Miss, SEC champion (I know, I'm shocked...)
8-1 Miami (but a loss to 7-3 Auburn and no real good wins)
8-1 WVA (a win over Penn St and a bunch of nothing plus a loss to 4-5 Pitt)
8-0-1 Va Tech (no wins over any teams with a winning record and a tie with 4-4-2 William and Mary)
We all know, of course, who gets picked out of that list of teams in 1954. What's amusing today is to watch how there are actually folks who would pretend that "because they're undefeated, Va Tech should go" is a valid argument.
BCS Playoff: Ohio St vs UCLA
Four-team playoff: Ohio St vs Notre Dame, UCLA vs Oklahoma
Again, the champion selection is defensible. Oklahoma may have suffered not only from location but also because they had lost their bowl game after winning the title in 1950.
National champion: Ohio State 9-0
Undefeated teams:#2 UCLA 9-0, #3 Oklahoma 10-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #16 Va Tech 8-0-1
UP Champion: UCLA
We were "this close"...."this close"........to having an on-the-field national championship game for the first time in history, and the problems this would have caused might have actually expedited the playoff process rather than putting them in a 60-year delay. "If only" marks 1954.
1) The polling shows....
Let's get it out of the way right now - Ohio State was a damn fine football team in 1954. And so was UCLA. And thanks to the "no repeat" rule that prevented UCLA from facing Ohio State in the Rose Bowl (because UCLA had just gone the previous January), Ohio State wound up in a mud bath with USC and won, 20-7, the narrowness of which gave ammunition to Bruins fans who want to argue that THEY are the real champions of 1954. And quite frankly - using UCF logic - they ARE the deserving champions. Ironically, this whole thing happened because of (wait for it) a tie game that closed the 1953 football season. When Stanford and Cal finished in a tie to close the year, UCLA went from "going nowhere" to the Rose Bowl, where they lost a hard-fought contest against Michigan State, 28-20. That tie wound up costing the Bruins a chance for a head-to-head matchup with Ohio State, and oh boy would there have been a huge controversy had the Buckeyes lost to "the other champion" (UP) after both titles had been determined. The UP poll was released on November 29, and the Bruins got 21 of 35 first-place votes from the coaches, Ohio State got 11, and Notre Dame, Oklahoma, and Navy got one each. That's correct, 7-2 Navy got a first-place vote from the UP which is nothing; they got FOUR from the final AP poll, which wasn't even the most insane vote in the AP - 7-3 Auburn actually got a vote as well, which may not have been as bad as the 7 votes Miami got despite losing to Auburn.
Are you getting the idea some of these polls - at least down ballot - are flat out absurd???
2) And then there's Oklahoma..
From October 10, 1953 all the way until November 16, 1957 - an ENTIRE Presidential administration - the Oklahoma Sooners won a mind-boggling 47 games in a row. For all of the Alabama pouting about "the stole a three-peat from us," Oklahoma might have been the first. OU wound up third in 1954 and then won the next to national championships. But without sounding like I'm attacking a great accomplishment, it is not as though Oklahoma was winning 47 games against Top Ten teams. FORTY of their 47 wins came against teams with 6-4 records or worse; THIRTY-THREE came against teams with records of 5-5 or worse. In their entire run, Oklahoma beat exactly THREE teams with records of 8-2 or better - Maryland twice in bowl games and Colorado in 1956. And that Colorado team lost to 4-4-2 Oregon 35-0 AT HOME, so how good were they really?
Yes, Oklahoma won 47 games in a row - against largely a bunch of teams ill-equipped to compete with them. Texas was absolutely horrible in 1954-56, although they were good in 1953 and 1957. But Oklahoma's 47 games weren't as tough as Texas's four games in a row in October/November 2008, when they won 3 and lost the final one to Texas Tech, either. So yes, you can celebrate it, but consider it in the larger context. It's like saying 1939 Tennessee has the greatest defense ever because they never surrendered a point in the regular season.
3) And the fans, too....
Put ten college football fans in a room and you will get a dozen different opinions of the same subject. A controversy erupted, two of them, in fact. Both concerned UCLA, which was probably good for their program.
The first concerned outrage in both Los Angeles and Columbus that Ohio State and UCLA COULD NOT meet each other on the field of play. Both teams wanted a piece of each other, but the rules were the rules. As if that wasn't enough, however, the potential offer of playing a charity game with Oklahoma squaring off against UCLA to benefit the Olympic Games Fund (now the USOC) was tossed about and summarily rejected by UCLA's President, who had the good political sense to realize he was a member of a conference with rules in black and white they absolutely would not change and had agreed upon. Ohio State - well in 2020 anyway - not so much. And, of course, the high-level trolling and feigned outrage broke out along predictable lines. UCLA fans delighted in pointing out the entire problem was caused by the Big Ten insisting on the "no repeat" rule, and now they'd really messed themselves over. After all, if Ohio State won then all the West Coast fans had to do was say, "Yeah, against the second best team," but if Ohio State lost then the West Coast fans could say, "See, you're not that good anyway."
Few seemed bothered whether this would affect the national championship award in any way, though.
4) And the press..
The complaining began and rightly so. Writers across the country began expressing outrage at the system that enabled teams that had lost 3 (USC) and 4 (Nebraska) games to go play in exhibition bowl games because of inclusion rules. (There's something of an irony here - in this case, the sportswriters are AGAINST inclusion). And the first of many predictions that came to pass was made: television's growth was going to alter the course of the bowl games. The point was that YES, the games on-site might well be sold out even before the season began, but once all the games were televised nationwide, the "no repeat rule" would have go by the wayside else viewers of television shrink. It's probably no accident that the removal of all the "no repeat rule" clauses coincided with 8-3 Florida facing 8-3 Nebraska before a half empty Sugar Bowl stadium on December 31, 1974.
5) But did the right team win the national championship??
As a reminder, if UCLA had played and beaten Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, it would not have changed the already determined outcome of a split national championship. Under the circumstances, a split title is okay (
SWIDT?) but what about Oklahoma? And let's be clear about something - even if one agrees that the three teams listed should play in a four-team playoff, you have a different problem: which team is the fourth team?
8-1 Notre Dame (a 13-point loss to 5-3-1 Purdue, who got drilled by Ohio St)
9-1 Ole Miss, SEC champion (I know, I'm shocked...)
8-1 Miami (but a loss to 7-3 Auburn and no real good wins)
8-1 WVA (a win over Penn St and a bunch of nothing plus a loss to 4-5 Pitt)
8-0-1 Va Tech (no wins over any teams with a winning record and a tie with 4-4-2 William and Mary)
We all know, of course, who gets picked out of that list of teams in 1954. What's amusing today is to watch how there are actually folks who would pretend that "because they're undefeated, Va Tech should go" is a valid argument.
BCS Playoff: Ohio St vs UCLA
Four-team playoff: Ohio St vs Notre Dame, UCLA vs Oklahoma
Again, the champion selection is defensible. Oklahoma may have suffered not only from location but also because they had lost their bowl game after winning the title in 1950.
1955 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Oklahoma 10-0
Undefeated teams:#3 Maryland 10-0, #15 Miami (Ohio) 9-0
UP Champion: Oklahoma
Maybe the most uncontroversial poll of the entire 1950s. And though the result was not in at the time, Oklahoma DID beat Maryland in the Orange Bowl. Not a lot of controversy here at all. Although Oklahoma's schedule does not look all that challenging at the END of the season, it's not as though the Sooners were attempting to game the system UCF-style, either. When the games with North Carolina, Pitt, and Texas were scheduled, all were very good teams. When your winning streak reaches 29 games in a row and you're THE major unbeaten, you're going to win the national championship.
Of course given the climate of the time, if Michigan State doesn't somehow blow the game to 2-7 Purdue, one wonders if OU makes out as well as they did. Maryland was being evaluated as "well, they don't really beat anyone of substance and oh yeah, Oklahoma beat them in the bowl game last time." Fortunately, OU prevailed again, no doubt sparing us years of old Terps fans whining online about how "we wuz robbed" in 1955.
This is a common theme to be repeated: controversial championships are usually followed by consensus, no-doubt-about-it championships.
National champion: Oklahoma 10-0
Undefeated teams:#3 Maryland 10-0, #15 Miami (Ohio) 9-0
UP Champion: Oklahoma
Maybe the most uncontroversial poll of the entire 1950s. And though the result was not in at the time, Oklahoma DID beat Maryland in the Orange Bowl. Not a lot of controversy here at all. Although Oklahoma's schedule does not look all that challenging at the END of the season, it's not as though the Sooners were attempting to game the system UCF-style, either. When the games with North Carolina, Pitt, and Texas were scheduled, all were very good teams. When your winning streak reaches 29 games in a row and you're THE major unbeaten, you're going to win the national championship.
Of course given the climate of the time, if Michigan State doesn't somehow blow the game to 2-7 Purdue, one wonders if OU makes out as well as they did. Maryland was being evaluated as "well, they don't really beat anyone of substance and oh yeah, Oklahoma beat them in the bowl game last time." Fortunately, OU prevailed again, no doubt sparing us years of old Terps fans whining online about how "we wuz robbed" in 1955.
This is a common theme to be repeated: controversial championships are usually followed by consensus, no-doubt-about-it championships.
1956 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Oklahoma 10-0
Undefeated teams:#2 Tennessee 10-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #5 Texas A/M 9-0-1,#6 Miami (Florida) 8-0-1
UP Champion: Oklahoma
Well, we're 21 years into the AP poll and for the TENTH time an SEC team has run the table with an undefeated record (seven without ties) and NOT won the national championship. At this point only one team - 1951 Tennessee - has cracked the glass ceiling, and it appears that had more to do with splitting the vote than anything else. Oklahoma might SORT OF be considered a "Southern" team in a sense. But if there was any doubt about the blatant Big 10 homerism going on. Let's review a few points from 1955:
#2 Michigan St had a loss to Michigan while Maryland was undefeated. We can spot Sparty this one because Michigan WAS a good 7-2 team in 1955, and it's clear MSU probably was national title material otherwise. And no, the result was not available, but Maryland did vindicate themselves somewhat by the fact they beat UCLA in-season by more points than Michigan St did in the Rose Bowl. This one is not really worth getting angry. The same cannot be said, however, of the next one.
Ohio St (7-2) came it at number five. They lost to Stanford (who wound up at 16) and to unranked Duke by six points AT HOME. I said unranked Duke...a Duke team that actually went 7-2-1 and by all accounts should AT A MINIMUM been ranked ahead of the Ohio St team they beat. Duke's two losses were to Georgia Tech and Pitt, their tie to Navy, ALL RANKED TEAMS. And they had one win against ranked teams just as did the Buckeyes - in this case OVER the Buckeyes. Duke not being ahead of Ohio St is bad enough; Duke not even being in the Top 20 AT ALL (save for the UP coaches poll) makes you wonder why some of those guys got to vote. Rest assured that had Duke been named, say, Iowa or Indiana, they'd have been in the top five. This is just one of the more egregious cases but suffice it to say that this exercise is getting tired. Then again, the Southern teams are hardly helping themslves.
1) Integration and the 1956 Sugar Bowl
The 1956 Sugar Bowl - following, of course, the 1955 season - was the first time a black player ever took the field in that game. Naturally, this could not be done without causing a ruckus. Keep in mind that in 1954, the Supreme Court had just ordered the desegregation of public schools. In 1955, there was the Emmitt Till murder and - just one month before the Sugar Bowl - Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus. And AT THE TIME - in the rare games where Northern and Southern teams played each other - there was an unspoken "gentleman's agreement" (hard to think of a more inappropriate title) that black players would not see action in these games. It was also flat out dangerous as several instances of Southern teams dogpiling or intentionally injuring the black player on the first play of the game are amply documented. It wasn't just stupid - it was flat out dangerous. Ironically, this game involved Georgia Tech, a school that -by comparison with the rest of the SEC to this point - had actually been progressive (not that they were great by any means). Tech had already played several games against integrated teams...all outside the South. The 1956 Sugar Bowl paired Tech against Pitt, who had a fullback/linebacker named Bobby Grier who (wait for it) was black. On the day after Rosa Parks stood up by sitting down, Georgia Governor Marvin Griffin (who had a son who attended Tech) sent a telegram requesting that state of Georgia teams not play games against teams with either black players or (get this) black fans in the stands (note: the Sugar Bowl seating was still segregated at this tie). In typical Southern governor fashion, Griffin met privately with Bobby Dodd and Tech President Van Leer and gave them his blessing for the game to occur. According to Dodd, the team was polled regarding playing against Pitt or any integrated team, and the vote was unanimous in favor of the game.
I don't share this to engage in politics or sociology, but I do share it to show how it MIGHT POSSIBLY have affected how a voter from outside of the South might view voting for a Southern team for the national championship. It's one thing to know about bad things happening far away geographically, but it's another entirely when television brings the story into your home. Tech prevailed over Pitt, but this did not stop the state of Louisiana from passing a law banning integrated sports, and that's why when you look at those Sugar Bowl games from the time period, you see a lot of Southern teams against each other (that and the teams outside the South told the Sugar Bowl where to go).
2) The Strength of Schedule Argument
It's truly amazing that Oklahoma's 1956 team that was at the peak of their running through the opposition like a hot knife through butter got away with it. Their schedule was - unbelievably - softer than BYU's 1984 schedule was. Again, this was not all their fault, but it's still a fact of life.
3) But did the right team win the national championship?
If you hold to the "to be the man, you've got to beat the man" argument then, yes. Oklahoma was the defending champion and had a record unbeaten streak. You're not going to win that argument.
History bailed out the Sooners when Tennessee lost the Sugar Bowl to Baylor.
The South in general and the SEC in particular have gotten sick and tired of the whole thing. Year after year they put good teams on the field. And in 1956, the two best teams in the SEC DID play each other as the Vols knocked off Georgia Tech. And year after year they were denied any recognition, a particularly painful rejection since the UP now had their own poll. Of course, there was no way coaches were going against an unbeaten defending champion. What could be done about this?
Well, there was a school on the Plains of Eastern Alabama who would knock down the door. It would take some planning, some luck - and yes, it might even require a loophole to win the national championship. It is a story of intrigue, amusement, and using the nuance of rules to just flat out get away with it. But in the end, the SEC was about to ram right through the door and leave an entire nation of football fans enraged.
And I'm not even talking about 2010. Not yet anyway.
National champion: Oklahoma 10-0
Undefeated teams:#2 Tennessee 10-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #5 Texas A/M 9-0-1,#6 Miami (Florida) 8-0-1
UP Champion: Oklahoma
Well, we're 21 years into the AP poll and for the TENTH time an SEC team has run the table with an undefeated record (seven without ties) and NOT won the national championship. At this point only one team - 1951 Tennessee - has cracked the glass ceiling, and it appears that had more to do with splitting the vote than anything else. Oklahoma might SORT OF be considered a "Southern" team in a sense. But if there was any doubt about the blatant Big 10 homerism going on. Let's review a few points from 1955:
#2 Michigan St had a loss to Michigan while Maryland was undefeated. We can spot Sparty this one because Michigan WAS a good 7-2 team in 1955, and it's clear MSU probably was national title material otherwise. And no, the result was not available, but Maryland did vindicate themselves somewhat by the fact they beat UCLA in-season by more points than Michigan St did in the Rose Bowl. This one is not really worth getting angry. The same cannot be said, however, of the next one.
Ohio St (7-2) came it at number five. They lost to Stanford (who wound up at 16) and to unranked Duke by six points AT HOME. I said unranked Duke...a Duke team that actually went 7-2-1 and by all accounts should AT A MINIMUM been ranked ahead of the Ohio St team they beat. Duke's two losses were to Georgia Tech and Pitt, their tie to Navy, ALL RANKED TEAMS. And they had one win against ranked teams just as did the Buckeyes - in this case OVER the Buckeyes. Duke not being ahead of Ohio St is bad enough; Duke not even being in the Top 20 AT ALL (save for the UP coaches poll) makes you wonder why some of those guys got to vote. Rest assured that had Duke been named, say, Iowa or Indiana, they'd have been in the top five. This is just one of the more egregious cases but suffice it to say that this exercise is getting tired. Then again, the Southern teams are hardly helping themslves.
1) Integration and the 1956 Sugar Bowl
The 1956 Sugar Bowl - following, of course, the 1955 season - was the first time a black player ever took the field in that game. Naturally, this could not be done without causing a ruckus. Keep in mind that in 1954, the Supreme Court had just ordered the desegregation of public schools. In 1955, there was the Emmitt Till murder and - just one month before the Sugar Bowl - Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on the bus. And AT THE TIME - in the rare games where Northern and Southern teams played each other - there was an unspoken "gentleman's agreement" (hard to think of a more inappropriate title) that black players would not see action in these games. It was also flat out dangerous as several instances of Southern teams dogpiling or intentionally injuring the black player on the first play of the game are amply documented. It wasn't just stupid - it was flat out dangerous. Ironically, this game involved Georgia Tech, a school that -by comparison with the rest of the SEC to this point - had actually been progressive (not that they were great by any means). Tech had already played several games against integrated teams...all outside the South. The 1956 Sugar Bowl paired Tech against Pitt, who had a fullback/linebacker named Bobby Grier who (wait for it) was black. On the day after Rosa Parks stood up by sitting down, Georgia Governor Marvin Griffin (who had a son who attended Tech) sent a telegram requesting that state of Georgia teams not play games against teams with either black players or (get this) black fans in the stands (note: the Sugar Bowl seating was still segregated at this tie). In typical Southern governor fashion, Griffin met privately with Bobby Dodd and Tech President Van Leer and gave them his blessing for the game to occur. According to Dodd, the team was polled regarding playing against Pitt or any integrated team, and the vote was unanimous in favor of the game.
I don't share this to engage in politics or sociology, but I do share it to show how it MIGHT POSSIBLY have affected how a voter from outside of the South might view voting for a Southern team for the national championship. It's one thing to know about bad things happening far away geographically, but it's another entirely when television brings the story into your home. Tech prevailed over Pitt, but this did not stop the state of Louisiana from passing a law banning integrated sports, and that's why when you look at those Sugar Bowl games from the time period, you see a lot of Southern teams against each other (that and the teams outside the South told the Sugar Bowl where to go).
2) The Strength of Schedule Argument
It's truly amazing that Oklahoma's 1956 team that was at the peak of their running through the opposition like a hot knife through butter got away with it. Their schedule was - unbelievably - softer than BYU's 1984 schedule was. Again, this was not all their fault, but it's still a fact of life.
3) But did the right team win the national championship?
If you hold to the "to be the man, you've got to beat the man" argument then, yes. Oklahoma was the defending champion and had a record unbeaten streak. You're not going to win that argument.
History bailed out the Sooners when Tennessee lost the Sugar Bowl to Baylor.
The South in general and the SEC in particular have gotten sick and tired of the whole thing. Year after year they put good teams on the field. And in 1956, the two best teams in the SEC DID play each other as the Vols knocked off Georgia Tech. And year after year they were denied any recognition, a particularly painful rejection since the UP now had their own poll. Of course, there was no way coaches were going against an unbeaten defending champion. What could be done about this?
Well, there was a school on the Plains of Eastern Alabama who would knock down the door. It would take some planning, some luck - and yes, it might even require a loophole to win the national championship. It is a story of intrigue, amusement, and using the nuance of rules to just flat out get away with it. But in the end, the SEC was about to ram right through the door and leave an entire nation of football fans enraged.
And I'm not even talking about 2010. Not yet anyway.
1957 AP FINAL POLL
National champion: Auburn 10-0
Undefeated teams:#12 Arizona St 10-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #20 VMI 9-0-1
UP Champion: Ohio St 8-1
Finally - finally - an SEC team managed to break through. And in the end, it was for the good of the game and resulted in some much needed changes to the Associated Press poll. 1957 is a year filled with irony on multiple levels, irony that detracts from the unqualified assertion that Auburn was - without any real dispute - the best team in America in 1957. The Tigers surrendered only 28 points and threw only 33 passes all year. The SEC was a strong conference that year (5 ranked teams in the 12-team conference), and Auburn played 3 of the other 4 ranked teams, missing only Ole Miss.
Ohio State won a deeply divided vote for the coaches poll, gaining 14 votes to 11 for Auburn. Michigan State won 8 votes and Arizona State got two.
1) November 16, 1957 - a day that will live in infamy
That was the day that Oklahoma's 47-game winning streak came crashing to a halt at the hands of Notre Dame, a 7-0 Irish win in Norman. But as shocking as that was, it might have paled in comparison with Coach Paul Bryant's #1 Texas A/M Aggies losing a stunning upset to Rice, 7-6, after word leaked on Thursday that Bryant had reached an agreement to become the new coach at Alabama. Keep in mind that from 1955 through 1957 (after his only losing season as head coach), Bryant's "Junction Boys" tore through the Southwest Conference like a Texas tornado. While Oklahoma was running up a 31-1 mark, Bryant had run up a 24-2-2 record in the same time frame. Number one and number two both fell in the polls which should have led to #3 jumping to the top spot, right? (It does sort of boggle my mind that the 1966 Alabama guys thought that was automatic). Well, Auburn was #3 but this is 1957. Michigan St now pole vaulted Auburn and jumped to number one despite a worse record, Sparty going from nine first-place votes to 87, Auburn jumping from 42 to 88, and hot on their heels the Ohio State Buckeyes, jumping from 6 to 3 - somewhat justifiably - after knocking off #5 Iowa. It appeared that yet another SEC team was going to run the table - this time in spectacular fashion - and lose out to a Big Ten team with an inferior record.
2) Auburn had one advantage - they played the last game.
Personally, I think this one is overstated. After all, Alabama played the last game in 1966, and it didn't matter. This was not the 2006 BCS controversy. But thumping Alabama by a 40-0 score while the name of the Crimson flame was still bright even if the times were dark could not have hurt Auburn. But what helped them most of all was the breakthrough every single team in the South needed.
3) Woody Hayes then raised the temperature with an observation that Auburn had not beaten anybody.
I'll defend Hayes ONLY on the point that he was a coach advocating for his team. His rhetorical comment - "but who have they played" - is the first comment I can find by a COACH trying to steer his team to a national championship. There are many instances of either fans or especially sportswriters making this argument, including 1954, but Hayes weighed into the controversy and stoked the flame. Whether he actually believed this or not or whether this was appealing to the demonstrable favor that had been granted virtually every other time in the past when the Big 10/Notre Dame group had a team in the running, I do not know. It also gave Auburn plenty to fear because anyone who looked at previous results - hell, anyone who looked at just the prior year - knew that SEC teams did not win national titles.
It should also be noted that as a matter of precise fact, Hayes's argument was 100% nonsense. Auburn's schedule was, in fact, more difficult than Ohio State's was. Not by much to be sure but more difficult yes.
So Auburn went for broke by pulling the same trick that had worked so effectively in the 1957 MLB All-Star Game...ironically in Ohio of all places.
4) The Ballot Stuffing Operation
Fans voted for the All-Stars in baseball in 1957. They did not in 1958 thanks to a tactic that worked beyond the wildest dreams of the Cincinnati Reds organization and that may have helped influence Auburn's decision-making. It was common back then for teams to pass out many ballots to a single fan attending ballgames but in 1957, the Reds fans went above and beyond at stuffing the ballot box and getting a whopping seven Cincinnati Reds elected to start the All-Star game. The only starting position, in fact, the Reds didn't quite pull off was electing George Crowe over Stan Musial at first base. Frank Robinson was an obvious good choice but the election of Gus Bell and Wally Post - good players mind you - over Willie Mays and Hank Aaron was absurdity run amuck. Although it is doubtful the Reds were the first team to every try this, they were the first to succeed, and it cost fans the vote until Bowie Kuhn brought it back in 1970, coincidentally in time for the game in (wait for it) Cincinnati.
In the poll right after the Big Ten ended their season, Auburn was sitting precariously at number one but had lost 3 votes to Ohio State, who had shot past Sparty to #2 with 65 votes and one poll left to go. Staring at the potential unbeaten season without a national championship, Auburn Athletic Director Bill Beckwith devised a counter-strategy to offset Hayes's schedule argument.
As I've noted, the AP vote was very loosely controlled back then. Sometimes a deluge of votes would come in for only the final poll. It had never been decisive before, and there was no reason to think it would be now. But Beckwith knew the rule, which was that any organization (newspaper or radio) that carried AP stories as eligible to vote in the AP poll. Beckwith worked the telephones feverishly and contacted as many Southern-based AP sites as he could find. Many of them didn't even know that had a potential AP vote, and given what they'd seen, they were more than willing to throw in to boost a Southern team (okay, Auburn) to the national title. A whopping 135 additional votes came in - nearly all of them for Auburn - and the Tigers waltzed off with the first-ever AP national championship trophy, which had been designed prior to the 1957 season.
5) But Auburn was on probation!!!
Amazing how often you hear this objection and not only from Alabama fans. USA Today's CFB Encyclopedia lists them as "the Probation Champions" in their coverage of 1957. Yes, Auburn was on probation in 1957 for offering $500 to two recruits.
Of course, I'm amazed that none of the fans who tell me this ever note that Oklahoma was on probation in 1955 when they won their first title or that both Ohio State and UCLA were on probation with one year after winning their 1954 titles. This may have made the difference in the UP poll, but it misses the point. Bryant's Texas A/M team had been on probation, too, and it was a way of life for most teams back then. Bear in mind the NCAA had only taken over as an enforcement agency in 1952, so the concept was still new. But yes, Auburn was on probation. That doesn't mean they couldn't be the best team in the country.
6) The irony of all ironies...
In 1957, the AP created a new trophy for the national champion. This was - apparently - the latest in one-upmanship between AP and UP. Indeed, the UP's ability to become an equal depended upon selecting a different champion that could be viewed as the equal of the AP champion. There was also a rule attached - any team (starting from 1957 onward) that won 3 AP national championships would get to retire the trophy and keep it at their school.
The AP trophy first won by Auburn in 1957 is kept at the Bryant Museum, retired after Alabama won the 1965 national title.
7) But did the right team win the national championship??
On the AP side absolutely. On the UP side? Probably not. There is simply no way to get around losing AT HOME to 5-4-1 TCU, which (along with Judy, the Lee County operator) is the most probable cause of why Auburn won the AP title over Ohio State. Under the criteria in use in 1957, this one is not even close regardless of how many phone calls were made.
However, there are TWO justifications for the coaches poll supporting Ohio State that are valid, one more so than the other:
1) Auburn is on a more serious probation with a bowl ban, and we do not want to reward such a team
2) I firmly believe that Ohio St would beat Auburn in a head-to-head matchup.
The question that will always remain, of course, aside from which team wins a head-to-head contest is this: if Michigan St and Ohio St had played and eliminated one of the teams, would Auburn have fared better or worse in the coaches poll? If integrity of play was the intent behind the coaches poll, it is certainly justifiable. Less so is the assumption Ohio State would beat Auburn. After all - who thought TCU would beat Ohio State?
There also might well have been a problem. Sure, the AP knew about the ballot stuffing but what were they gonna do? They were in a competition with the INS and UP to determine championship prestige. To have de facto eliminated Auburn because of something that was 100% legal and replace them with a Northern team with a better record after the prior history might well have fractured the AP poll beyond being able to maintain it. You cannot have a NATIONAL championship when what you are advocating is almost exclusively a REGIONAL championship. And things were about to get worse for the AP because in 1958, the INS was going to merge with the UP and form the UPI.
Auburn had breached the gate. They had crossed the moat and captured the castle. And the lesson was not going to be lost on other SEC schools as the calendar turned to 1958.
National champion: Auburn 10-0
Undefeated teams:#12 Arizona St 10-0
Undefeated teams with ties: #20 VMI 9-0-1
UP Champion: Ohio St 8-1
Finally - finally - an SEC team managed to break through. And in the end, it was for the good of the game and resulted in some much needed changes to the Associated Press poll. 1957 is a year filled with irony on multiple levels, irony that detracts from the unqualified assertion that Auburn was - without any real dispute - the best team in America in 1957. The Tigers surrendered only 28 points and threw only 33 passes all year. The SEC was a strong conference that year (5 ranked teams in the 12-team conference), and Auburn played 3 of the other 4 ranked teams, missing only Ole Miss.
Ohio State won a deeply divided vote for the coaches poll, gaining 14 votes to 11 for Auburn. Michigan State won 8 votes and Arizona State got two.
1) November 16, 1957 - a day that will live in infamy
That was the day that Oklahoma's 47-game winning streak came crashing to a halt at the hands of Notre Dame, a 7-0 Irish win in Norman. But as shocking as that was, it might have paled in comparison with Coach Paul Bryant's #1 Texas A/M Aggies losing a stunning upset to Rice, 7-6, after word leaked on Thursday that Bryant had reached an agreement to become the new coach at Alabama. Keep in mind that from 1955 through 1957 (after his only losing season as head coach), Bryant's "Junction Boys" tore through the Southwest Conference like a Texas tornado. While Oklahoma was running up a 31-1 mark, Bryant had run up a 24-2-2 record in the same time frame. Number one and number two both fell in the polls which should have led to #3 jumping to the top spot, right? (It does sort of boggle my mind that the 1966 Alabama guys thought that was automatic). Well, Auburn was #3 but this is 1957. Michigan St now pole vaulted Auburn and jumped to number one despite a worse record, Sparty going from nine first-place votes to 87, Auburn jumping from 42 to 88, and hot on their heels the Ohio State Buckeyes, jumping from 6 to 3 - somewhat justifiably - after knocking off #5 Iowa. It appeared that yet another SEC team was going to run the table - this time in spectacular fashion - and lose out to a Big Ten team with an inferior record.
2) Auburn had one advantage - they played the last game.
Personally, I think this one is overstated. After all, Alabama played the last game in 1966, and it didn't matter. This was not the 2006 BCS controversy. But thumping Alabama by a 40-0 score while the name of the Crimson flame was still bright even if the times were dark could not have hurt Auburn. But what helped them most of all was the breakthrough every single team in the South needed.
3) Woody Hayes then raised the temperature with an observation that Auburn had not beaten anybody.
I'll defend Hayes ONLY on the point that he was a coach advocating for his team. His rhetorical comment - "but who have they played" - is the first comment I can find by a COACH trying to steer his team to a national championship. There are many instances of either fans or especially sportswriters making this argument, including 1954, but Hayes weighed into the controversy and stoked the flame. Whether he actually believed this or not or whether this was appealing to the demonstrable favor that had been granted virtually every other time in the past when the Big 10/Notre Dame group had a team in the running, I do not know. It also gave Auburn plenty to fear because anyone who looked at previous results - hell, anyone who looked at just the prior year - knew that SEC teams did not win national titles.
It should also be noted that as a matter of precise fact, Hayes's argument was 100% nonsense. Auburn's schedule was, in fact, more difficult than Ohio State's was. Not by much to be sure but more difficult yes.
So Auburn went for broke by pulling the same trick that had worked so effectively in the 1957 MLB All-Star Game...ironically in Ohio of all places.
4) The Ballot Stuffing Operation
Fans voted for the All-Stars in baseball in 1957. They did not in 1958 thanks to a tactic that worked beyond the wildest dreams of the Cincinnati Reds organization and that may have helped influence Auburn's decision-making. It was common back then for teams to pass out many ballots to a single fan attending ballgames but in 1957, the Reds fans went above and beyond at stuffing the ballot box and getting a whopping seven Cincinnati Reds elected to start the All-Star game. The only starting position, in fact, the Reds didn't quite pull off was electing George Crowe over Stan Musial at first base. Frank Robinson was an obvious good choice but the election of Gus Bell and Wally Post - good players mind you - over Willie Mays and Hank Aaron was absurdity run amuck. Although it is doubtful the Reds were the first team to every try this, they were the first to succeed, and it cost fans the vote until Bowie Kuhn brought it back in 1970, coincidentally in time for the game in (wait for it) Cincinnati.
In the poll right after the Big Ten ended their season, Auburn was sitting precariously at number one but had lost 3 votes to Ohio State, who had shot past Sparty to #2 with 65 votes and one poll left to go. Staring at the potential unbeaten season without a national championship, Auburn Athletic Director Bill Beckwith devised a counter-strategy to offset Hayes's schedule argument.
As I've noted, the AP vote was very loosely controlled back then. Sometimes a deluge of votes would come in for only the final poll. It had never been decisive before, and there was no reason to think it would be now. But Beckwith knew the rule, which was that any organization (newspaper or radio) that carried AP stories as eligible to vote in the AP poll. Beckwith worked the telephones feverishly and contacted as many Southern-based AP sites as he could find. Many of them didn't even know that had a potential AP vote, and given what they'd seen, they were more than willing to throw in to boost a Southern team (okay, Auburn) to the national title. A whopping 135 additional votes came in - nearly all of them for Auburn - and the Tigers waltzed off with the first-ever AP national championship trophy, which had been designed prior to the 1957 season.
5) But Auburn was on probation!!!
Amazing how often you hear this objection and not only from Alabama fans. USA Today's CFB Encyclopedia lists them as "the Probation Champions" in their coverage of 1957. Yes, Auburn was on probation in 1957 for offering $500 to two recruits.
Of course, I'm amazed that none of the fans who tell me this ever note that Oklahoma was on probation in 1955 when they won their first title or that both Ohio State and UCLA were on probation with one year after winning their 1954 titles. This may have made the difference in the UP poll, but it misses the point. Bryant's Texas A/M team had been on probation, too, and it was a way of life for most teams back then. Bear in mind the NCAA had only taken over as an enforcement agency in 1952, so the concept was still new. But yes, Auburn was on probation. That doesn't mean they couldn't be the best team in the country.
6) The irony of all ironies...
In 1957, the AP created a new trophy for the national champion. This was - apparently - the latest in one-upmanship between AP and UP. Indeed, the UP's ability to become an equal depended upon selecting a different champion that could be viewed as the equal of the AP champion. There was also a rule attached - any team (starting from 1957 onward) that won 3 AP national championships would get to retire the trophy and keep it at their school.
The AP trophy first won by Auburn in 1957 is kept at the Bryant Museum, retired after Alabama won the 1965 national title.
7) But did the right team win the national championship??
On the AP side absolutely. On the UP side? Probably not. There is simply no way to get around losing AT HOME to 5-4-1 TCU, which (along with Judy, the Lee County operator) is the most probable cause of why Auburn won the AP title over Ohio State. Under the criteria in use in 1957, this one is not even close regardless of how many phone calls were made.
However, there are TWO justifications for the coaches poll supporting Ohio State that are valid, one more so than the other:
1) Auburn is on a more serious probation with a bowl ban, and we do not want to reward such a team
2) I firmly believe that Ohio St would beat Auburn in a head-to-head matchup.
The question that will always remain, of course, aside from which team wins a head-to-head contest is this: if Michigan St and Ohio St had played and eliminated one of the teams, would Auburn have fared better or worse in the coaches poll? If integrity of play was the intent behind the coaches poll, it is certainly justifiable. Less so is the assumption Ohio State would beat Auburn. After all - who thought TCU would beat Ohio State?
There also might well have been a problem. Sure, the AP knew about the ballot stuffing but what were they gonna do? They were in a competition with the INS and UP to determine championship prestige. To have de facto eliminated Auburn because of something that was 100% legal and replace them with a Northern team with a better record after the prior history might well have fractured the AP poll beyond being able to maintain it. You cannot have a NATIONAL championship when what you are advocating is almost exclusively a REGIONAL championship. And things were about to get worse for the AP because in 1958, the INS was going to merge with the UP and form the UPI.
Auburn had breached the gate. They had crossed the moat and captured the castle. And the lesson was not going to be lost on other SEC schools as the calendar turned to 1958.
Latest threads
-
-
-
News Article: Auburn Football Claiming More Championships- Started by sanjosecrimson
- Replies: 31
-
News Article: Aubarn DL Antonio Coleman Suspended Indefinitely
- Started by cdub55
- Replies: 7
TideFans.shop - Get your Gear HERE!
Alabama Crimson Tide Car Door Light
Get this and many more items at our TideFans.shop!
Purchases may result in a commission being paid to TideFans.