Clemson a top-20 all-time program

By Chris Preston  |   Wednesday, July 23, 2008  |  Comments( 6 )

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Mindlessly scanning through ESPN.com on Tuesday, I stumbled on its rankings of the Top 50 college basketball programs in the NCAA Tournament era. That got me thinking: Where would Clemson fall in an all-time ranking of college football programs? My inclination was to say somewhere in the top 20 or 25, but I wanted to really do some digging to come up with as precise a ranking as possible of where the Tigers stand historically.

Not surprisingly, a quick Google search revealed that an all-time college football program ranking does exist thanks to the College Football Research Center. Called “Billingsley’s All Time Top Programs," the ratings appear to be pretty objective. In fact, they’re too objective – as evidenced by Clemson’s No. 37 ranking, behind the likes of Army, Stanford, Mississippi and, most cruelly, North Carolina. That’s because they literally span the entire history of college football – from 1869 to 2007 – and make no distinction between past and present. That's where the lofty Army (No. 35) and Mississippi (No. 33) rankings came from.

To truly capture which are the top programs, you have to weight the rankings heavily toward the present day – or at least the last 40 to 50 years. There are simply more bowls, teams and games played these days, so “national” championships mean a lot more now. If they didn’t, then we would be uttering the names of Ivy League schools like Harvard and Yale – the dominant programs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when very few colleges even had football programs – in the same breath as Alabama and Ohio State. Like ESPN’s college hoops rankings, any ratings system of all-time college football programs has to hold modern-day success (i.e., the last 25 to 30 years) in a much higher regard.

With those guidelines in mind, here are the programs that I discovered to be unequivocally above Clemson historically (in descending order): Notre Dame, USC, Alabama, Michigan, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Ohio State, Miami, Texas, Florida State, Penn State, Tennessee, Florida, LSU and Georgia. Please don’t embarrass yourself by arguing otherwise. After that group, though, Clemson is surprisingly close. Auburn would be next in line by my calculations: While its national championship tally of one equals Clemson’s, the “other” Tigers boast a better all-time winning percentage than Clemson (.630 to .590), more bowl victories (including last year’s narrow head-to-head win in the Peach Bowl), and far more success in the last 10 to 15 years.

But after Auburn, I have Clemson tied at No. 17 with Washington. Each boasts a national title (the Huskies’ came in 1991); their bowl records are virtually identical; and while the Huskies have more victories and a superior winning percentage (.626), they have claimed three fewer conference championships than Clemson and, unlike the Tigers, have really struggled this decade. Texas A&M, also with one national title to its credit, is close thanks to its 18 conference titles (matching Clemson’s total), but the Aggies have a losing bowl record and that lone championship came in 1939. Because Clemson’s came in 1981 – a decade in which one could easily make the argument that the Tigers were a top-10 program under Danny Ford – that trumps the Aggies’ World War II era crown.

Other than Washington and A&M, Clemson’s closest competition for the 17th spot comes from two fellow ACC members -- Georgia Tech and Virginia Tech. Surprisingly, the Yellow Jackets actually boast three national titles, though two of them came in 1917 and 1928. They also have more victories than the Tigers and a nearly identical winning percentage, but have claimed only two ACC titles to Clemson’s 13 and were an utterly inferior team throughout the entire ‘80s. The Hokies, on the other hand, have experienced far more success than Clemson over the last 15 years, but their lack of a national title and 7-14 bowl record leaves them a couple notches below their new conference mates.

So there you have it: By my highly unofficial estimation, the Clemson Tigers are tied with Washington as the 17th-best college football program of all time. In the spirit of keeping this interactive, please chime in with your opinions below (I know you will!) and I will write a follow-up piece for Friday.
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CommentsComments: 6  |  Sign Up  View all comments
No.1
RazzMaTazz		04:27 PM
07/24/2008
Chris: Did you use a formula for your rankings? It's not clear to me how Billingsley does his rankings. He seems to rely on W-L ...
No.2
Brent		09:11 AM
07/25/2008
Match your rankings and even the final polls from the last couple of years with a list of state schools by enrollment. I think ...
No.3
RazzMaTazz		11:27 PM
07/25/2008
Brent really changed th subject quite a bit. I'm guessing there are a few more schools, but off the top of my head, I think I'd ...
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