Back sometime last off season, I decided to try to post some old college football seasons. The only one I did was the 1946 and I decided to do another now. I choose 1946 last time because it was the year my grandparents were married. I'm choosing 1979 because it is when my parents were.

Most info from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1979_NCAA_...all_season

Football background:
1. The split into I-A and I-AA started in 1978, but hasn't affected the composition at the top level a whole lot just yet. As such, the Ivy League, the Missouri Valley Conference, the Southern Conference, the Southland Conference, Pacific Coast Athletic Association, and several smaller independents are all still at the top division for the monument. We have a grand total of 140 teams at this level. This includes 2 newcomers this year in independent Connecticut (not sure if they went by UConn yet at that point) and Southern Conference newbie East Tennessee State.

2. There are 15 bowls this year. As best I can tell, the only tie-ins were as follows:
Rose: Big Ten vs. PAC-10
Sugar: SEC
Cotton: Southwest
Orange: Big 8
Independence: Southland
Holiday: WAC

3. There are a great many independents here. Four ended up ranked: Florida State, Pitt, Penn State, and Temple. Others include Notre Dame (of course), Boston College, Miami (FL), Syracuse, Georgia Tech, West Virgina and many more.

4. The conferences that are going to be viewed the strongest at this point are the Big Ten, SEC, Big 8, Southwest Conference, and PAC-10. The ACC and the WAC are in the next tier and both end with one ranked team.

5. It's good to remember that while the national title race was very important, so was the race for the top bowls. Getting to one of the major bowls in and of itself was a much bigger deal than it has become now.

Season:
Bowls:
Rose Bowl: #3 USC 17 -#1 Ohio State 16
Sugar Bowl: #2 Alabama 24 -#6 Arkansas 9
Orange Bowl: #5 Oklahoma 24 -#4 Florida State 7
Cotton Bowl Classic: #8 Houston 17- #7 Nebraska 14
Bluebonnet Bowl: #12 Purdue 27 -Tennessee 22
Peach Bowl: #19 Baylor 24 -#18 Clemson 18
Hall of Fame Classic: Missouri 24 -#16 South Carolina 14
Gator Bowl: North Carolina 17 -#14 Michigan 15
Fiesta Bowl: #10 Pittsburgh 16 -Arizona 10
Sun Bowl: #13 Washington 14 -#11 Texas 7
Liberty Bowl: Penn State 9 -#15 Tulane 6
Tangerine Bowl: LSU 34 -Wake Forest 10
Holiday Bowl: Indiana 38 -#9 Brigham Young 37
Garden State Bowl: #20 Temple 28- California 17
Independence Bowl: Syracuse 31 -McNeese State 7

National Champ Title Race:
-USC started the season ranked #1. They tied in week 5 to Stanford and Alabama overtook them. Texas moves up to #2
-Week 5: Texas losses to Arkansas. Nebraska moves up to #2.
-Week 9: Ohio State under first year coach Earle Bruce (replacing Woody Hayes) beats Iowa 34-7 and moves up to #2.
-Week 13: Ohio State beats Michigan and moves up to #1 in the AP with Bama sliding to #2. Alabama remains #1 in the UPI.
-Bowls: #3 USC beats #1 OSU in the Rose Bowl 17-16 while #2 Alabama beats #6 Arkansas in the Sugar Bowl 24-9.
-Final Polls: Alabama is national champs in both the AP and UPI polls.

Conference Winners (for full standings see the Wikipedia page above).
Big 8: Oklahoma 11-1 (7-0)
Big Ten: Ohio State 11-1 (8-0)
PAC-10: USC 11-0-1 (6-0-1)
SEC: Alabama 12-0 (6-0)
Southwest Conference: co-champs Houston 11-1 (7-1) and Arkansas 10-2 (7-1)
ACC: North Carolina State 7-4 (5-1) -ACC has 7 teams this year.
WAC: BYU 11-1 (7-0) -WAC has 8 tams.
Ivy League: Yale 8-1 (6-1)
MAC: Central Michigan 10-0-1 (8-0-1) -MAC has 10 teams.
Missouri Valley: West Texas State 5-5-1 (5-0) -Missouri Valley has 7 teams.
Pacific Coast Athletic Association: co-champs: Utah State 7-3-1 (4-0-1)
and San Jose State 6-4-1 (4-0-1) -Conference has 6 teams.
Southern Conference: Chattanooga 9-2 (5-1) -Conference has 8 teams.
Southland Conference: McNeese State 11-1 (5-0) -Southland has 7 teams.

Notable independents:
Florida State 11-1
Pitt 11-1
UNLV 9-1-2
Temple 10-2

Final AP Poll:
1. Alabama
2. USC
3. Oklahoma
4. Ohio State
5. Houston
6. Florida State
7. Pittsburgh
8. Arkansas
9. Nebraska
10. Purdue
11. Washington
12. Texas
13. BYU
14. Baylor
15. North Carolina
16. Auburn
17. Temple
18. Michigan
19. Indiana
20. Penn State

It was the Southwest Conference not Southwestern Conference.

Thanks.

What made you choose this particular year?

I find it really interesting, always have. I grew up knowing a lot about it though because my father was on the UA NC team.

(01-06-2016 01:52 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote:  What made you choose this particular year?

I find it really interesting, always have. I grew up knowing a lot about it though because my father was on the UA NC team.

That is neat. Any good stories from him on it?

This particular year I picked as it was the year my parents got married. I choose 1946 before because my grandparents were married then. Mostly I was just looking for random years of the past and looking for outside reasons to choose them.

(01-06-2016 12:48 AM)ohio1317 Wrote:  Cotton Bowl Classic: #8 Houston 17- #7 Nebraska 14

I was there.

Few things I found interesting:
1. This is the 2nd year of the PAC-10. Arizona and Arizona State were added from the WAC the previous year. With the loss of those 2 teams, the WAC also lost the Fiesta Bowl (not yet a major bowl). They replaced it with the Holiday Bowl.

2. Indiana finished the year ranked and won the Holiday Bowl.

3. There are 3 ranked teams from Pennsylvania. Pitt ended up #7, Temple was #17 and Penn State ended #20.

4. Florida is the bottom team in the SEC and finished the year 0-10-1.

5. North Carolina finished ranked and North Carolina State is not. That looked very odd to me as the Tarheels are 8-3-1 and 3-3 in conference while North Carolina State is 7-4 and 5-1 in conference and ACC champs. Looking it up though North Carolina did beat the Wolfpack on the Tarheels only televised game of the year and finished the year by beating a ranked Michigan team in the Gator Bowl (their only other televised game).

6. I clicked through a few teams to see how much teams were televised after I looked up North Carolina. While I am guessing there might have been some more local broadcasts for some of these than are listed (particularly if none are listed), there weren't a lot of broadcast games even for the top teams. Most the higher ranked big name teams had 2 or 3 network appearances in the regular season including Notre Dame, national champion Alabama, Big Ten champ Ohio State, and Rose Bowl champ USC. USC was listed as having 2 more local appearances. USC/UCLA was covered locally and the USC/Oregon game was on an old pay TV station. Some of the games I noticed that weren't listed as broadcast include Florida State/Miami and Alabama/Auburn.

ESPN was one year old at this point and I do see it listed as broadcasting the Alabama/Tennessee game. ESPN is extremely low budget at this point in time and I'm surprised to see it broadcasting anything.

I wonder how many games were radio broadcast.

It seems bowl games were more regionally based than serving conference tie-ins back then.

A lot of the same teams that were at the top of college football in 1979 are still at the top in today's world.

1979 was the year Syracuse played every game on the road (their home games were at Meadowlands, Buffalo Rich Stadium and Cornell's Skoelkopf Field) while the Carrier Dome was being built. Syracuse in that era had some future great coaches on the staff: Tom Coughlin, Nick Saban, Randy Edsall under HC Frank Maloney.

Here is video for the younger guys...NFL greats: Syracuse (Joe Morris, Art Monk, Gary Anderson) Miami (Jim Kelly) are in the game video below. Also, I noticed MSU's DC Dave Warner played QB for Cuse (2nd string) at 11;45 mark and threw a pick.

The game was played at a near empty Rich Stadium (about 7-10k there) in late October.

Syracuse finished 7-5 and was actually better than their record indicated. They played undefeated McNeese St in one of the first Independence Bowls...they were expecting a Tangerine Bowl bid but lost the last week. They accepted an unexpected bid at 6-5 to the Independence Bowl. McNeese who's fans were chirping about an expected huge win that would get them ranked. They were essentially a 1-AA opponent but the best one out there. General Omar Bradley was the honored guest at the Bowl. The game was tied 3-3 at halftime then Cuse's depth/skill played took over and the Orangemen won 31-3.

(01-07-2016 02:53 PM)TexanMark Wrote:  Syracuse in that era had some future great coaches on the staff: Tom Coughlin, Nick Saban, Randy Edsall under HC Frank Maloney.

pretty interesting

Houston started out 8-0 in 1979. Our QB Delrick Brown made the cover of SI in November 1979 with four other players (Jarvis Redwine of Nebraska was one) with the title "Who's #1?" (see below). I believe Houston was ranked 5th at the time.

The next week, we lost to #8 Texas at home 21-13 before finishing 11-1 with a victory over Redwine and Nebraska in the Cotton.

(01-07-2016 04:37 PM)CougarRed Wrote:  Houston started out 8-0 in 1979. Our QB Delrick Brown made the cover of SI in November 1979 with four other players (Jarvis Redwine of Nebraska was one) with the title "Who's #1?" (see below). I believe Houston was ranked 5th at the time.

The next week, we lost to #8 Texas at home 21-13 before finishing 11-1 with a victory over Redwine and Nebraska in the Cotton.

Funny how all those teams wore some shade of red.

(01-08-2016 12:09 PM)Chappy Wrote:  

(01-07-2016 04:37 PM)CougarRed Wrote:  Houston started out 8-0 in 1979. Our QB Delrick Brown made the cover of SI in November 1979 with four other players (Jarvis Redwine of Nebraska was one) with the title "Who's #1?" (see below). I believe Houston was ranked 5th at the time.

The next week, we lost to #8 Texas at home 21-13 before finishing 11-1 with a victory over Redwine and Nebraska in the Cotton.

Funny how all those teams wore some shade of red.

Red scare.