Top 'Should-be' Superpowers
By Ryan McGee
Before we get started with this week's edition of Three Downs & Punt, a quick shout-out to the guy in the Jim Harbaugh Michigan jersey who stopped me in the concourse of Sunday's Bengals-Panthers game to say, "Hey, Bruce Feldman! Denard Robinson is going to come to your house and kick your butt for all that crap you wrote about him!"
No, I'm not Bruce Feldman. And no, Bruce hasn't written anything bad about Denard Robinson. But it was a nice change of pace from my usual out-in-public spontaneous chats with NASCAR fans who think I'm Marty Smith and accuse me of dating Jeff Gordon.
To the plays!
First Down: Should-be Superpowers That Aren't
Saturday's nail-biter between Rutgers and North Carolina brought together two programs that have long been a mystery to me. They are the flagship universities of two states that have always produced an assembly line of high school football talent. They have nice facilities, deep pockets and some genuine football history (the first intercollegiate football game, Charlie "Choo Choo" Justice) to use as building blocks for the future. But yet some mysterious force has always kept them from becoming tradition-rich, perennial football superpowers, a la Ohio State, Alabama, USC, etc.
That got me wondering: What are the biggest head-scratcher programs in college football? The schools that on paper should be slugging it out inside the Top 25 every season, but instead have long had to settle for yellowed newspaper clips of past glory or occasional flashes of greatness?
These are my top five. And the good news for fans of each program is that three of the five are off to very hot starts.
5. Arizona
Vitals:
Enrollment: 29,000
All-time record: 560-409-33
Last national championship: None
Last conference championship: 1993
It is truly astonishing when you realize that the home of "Bear Down" and the Desert Swarm has been playing football since 1899 and won (gulp) six conference championships, only one of which has come in the Pac-10, which the Wildcats have been a member of since 1978. They've still never been to the Rose Bowl, though Mike Stoops has them off to their best start in nearly a decade. In-state high school talent isn't as strong as most of the other schools on this list, but the Tucson-based school has long suffered while competing with Arizona State in flashier Phoenix and the lure of Southern California.
4. Michigan State
Vitals:
Enrollment: 48,000
All-time record: 629-429-44
Last national championship: 1966
Last conference championship: 1990
Like Arizona, the Spartans are forced to play second fiddle to an in-state school with more football success -- the Wolverines. Yes, they've won the Paul Bunyan Trophy the last two years, but still suffer from an inferiority complex that's been built over decades. MSU has had streaks of brilliance, including a share of six national titles from 1955-66 and two Big Ten titles in four years, coming in 1987 and '90. But their last Rose Bowl trip came in 1988, and truthfully, things haven't been consistently great in East Lansing since tying Notre Dame in the 1966 "Game of the Century." Though, like Arizona, spirits are way up these days.
3. North Carolina
Vitals:
Enrollment: 28,000
All-time record: 646-492-54
Last national championship: None
Last conference championship: 1980
The Tar Heel State has long been a recruit-rich environment and UNC has long had the inside track on harvesting that talent. The Tar Heels have plenty of history, big names (LT!), and have never shied from spending money on facilities, particularly over the last decade. But Kenan Stadium, no matter how big it gets, will always be overshadowed by the Dean Dome, and those recruits always seem to end up feeling, and playing, like second-class citizens. A charter member of the ACC, Carolina has won only five conference titles since 1953 and none since '80. Since Mack Brown departed for Texas in 1997, his three successors -- Carl Torbush, John Bunting and Butch Davis -- have gone 64-81. And just when everything seemed to be turning a corner, well, you know what's happened this year, right?
2. Minnesota
Vitals:
Enrollment: 51,000
All-time record: 643-467-44
Last national championship: 1960
Last conference championship: 1967
The Golden Gophers aren't merely overshadowed by an in-state rival. They're overshadowed by all of the states around them. Three years ago I attended the Michigan-Minnesota "Little Brown Jug" game at the Metrodome and it felt like a Wolverines pep rally. That night I was stunned to see all of Minnesota's championship banners, a grand total of six national and 18 Big Ten titles. Then I realized they were all really, really old. Their only Rose Bowl trips came in 1961-62 and their record since '79 is 153-206-3. The biggest excuse given for the Gophers' decline had always been the dome itself. The night I was there in '08 they held a dedication ceremony at the site of the current home, the sparkling 50,805-seat TCF Bank Stadium. So far they're 4-6 at TCF, including three straight losses this year.
1.Texas A&M
Vitals:
Enrollment: 49,000
All-time record: 669-440-48
Last national championship: 1939
Last conference championship: 1998
Before you start banging on me over this pick, let me say that I've conducted an informal poll with my fellow media members over the last three months on this topic, and the Aggies were a near-unanimous pick. Tradition, history, facilities, rabid fans, a ridiculously deep recruiting pool all around them ... A&M has them all in spades. But since the Aggies' 1998 Big 12 title, they started a slow decline from which they have never recovered. (The firing of R.C. Slocum -- career record at A&M: 123-47-2 -- in 2002 is also often mentioned as a downward turning point in the program's history.) The Aggies haven't finished a season inside the AP Top 25 since their No. 23 ranking in '99. "It is one of the biggest mysteries in all of college football," Lee Corso said to me during a telephone conversation one year ago. "You stand there on a Friday night and watch the entire stadium packed for Midnight Yell practice and the 12th Man and all of that. And they're the second-biggest program in the state of Texas. How can they not transform that into success on the field?"
Also receiving votes: Syracuse, Colorado, Rutgers, Maryland, South Carolina, Missouri, Virginia, Mississippi State
