quo vadis
Legend
Posts: 50,174
Joined: Aug 2008
Reputation: 2425
I Root For: USF/Georgetown
Location: New Orleans
|
RE: List of Hypothetical G5 National Champions
(01-12-2021 05:30 PM)AllTideUp Wrote: (10-23-2019 08:38 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (10-23-2019 08:27 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote: (10-23-2019 08:16 AM)quo vadis Wrote: (10-22-2019 01:33 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote: From https://americanrx.blogspot.com/2015/08/...hamps.html
there are three teams in the FBS with [recognized] national titles which are not in a P5 league; two of them are in the American Athletic Conference (AAC), the third is independent:
National Championships
SMU, 3 - 1935, 1981, 1982
Army, 3 - 1944, 1945, 1946
Navy, 1 - 1926
I remember 1982, and Penn State was the national champion that year.
I also remember 1981, and Clemson was the national champion that year.
SMU was the national champion neither of those years. The AP and UPI polls determined the national champions at that time, the only time anyone ever talked about a "split" championship was if they differed, e.g., in 1978, when the AP picked Alabama and the UPI picked USC.
Upon further review, the call is reversed - those SMU championship claims are pretty flimsy! I'd probably give more credence to UCF's recent claim - at least they were undefeated! (SMU was not)
Sorry if it seems I'm picking at you, but the notion of schools retroactively claiming titles, or doing so in the present day, based on flimsy nobody polls just because the NCAA has a list of 30 of them gets my goat, LOL.
But FWIW, SMU was undefeated in 1982. They had 11 wins and a tie, the only team that finished in the top 10 that didn't lose. They won the SWC and beat #6 Pitt, a loaded team with Dan Marino that was ranked #1 part of the year, in the Cotton Bowl. National champ Penn State did have a loss, they were 11-1. SMU was not an outsider-cinderella, they started the season ranked #6, never fell lower than #8, and finished at #2. They were a big-time contender all season long.
Given that they played a real "P5" schedule that year, whereas 2017 UCF did not, I would say that SMU 1982 had a much stronger argument for being voted national champ than did UCF in 2017, who has no claim at all.
Nevertheless, the culture of college football then was that whether you have an argument or not, it doesn't matter, who the polls picked decided it. Pointing at a single computer or lesser poll and claiming a national title on that basis was regarded as sheer nonsense.
I can assure you that the custom of the time was, if you were an SMU, to gnash your teeth and shout that your team was "robbed" by the pollsters, not to hang a banner and pretend that you were voted national champs when you weren't.
E.g., I will go to my grave thinking that 1993 Notre Dame and 1994 Penn State were totally deserving of being voted #1 by at least one of the two major polls, and that they were robbed that it didn't happen. But they weren't, so they weren't the national champs those years.
Interesting.
Seems like SMU got shafted by not at least having the polls split that season.
Was that one of the Pony Express teams? Forgive my ignorance, but I was born in the 80s...lol.
Yep, that was a Pony Express team. Dickerson/James and Marino for Pitt played their last college games in that Cotton Bowl won by SMU.
One thing that hurt SMU was that they received harsh criticism for playing for a tie with #9 Arkansas in their last regular season game. SMU scored very late to cut Arkansas's lead from 10-3 to 10-9 [EDIT: 17-10 to 17-16], but opted to kick the XP and settle for a tie rather than going for two and the win. I remember thinking the criticism was harsh, but they did receive it and they dropped from #2 to #4 in the polls that week.
That same weekend, #3 Penn State was idle, but moved up to #2 thanks to SMU dropping. When Penn State then beat Pitt a week later to finish their regular season, that positioned now #2 Penn State to play #1 Georgia in the Sugar Bowl, effectively freezing SMU out of the national title situation.
That's the one thing those who say that in the famous 1983 Nebraska - Miami Orange Bowl game that Tom Osborne could have just settled for the tie with Miami and claimed the national title forget - just a year earlier, a major team had been heavily criticized and dropped in the polls for appearing to play for a tie.
(This post was last modified: 01-13-2021 08:42 AM by quo vadis.)
|
|