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Bill Connelly
Twenty-five years ago, heading into the Red River Rivalry game in 2000, it was hard to know what to make of Oklahoma. The Sooners were 4-0 for the first time in seven years, which was a sign that second-year head coach Bob Stoops was steering the Sooners out of their worst funk since the 1930s. They had gone just 44-45-3 over the previous eight seasons, handcuffed first by NCAA sanctions and then by two poor head coaching hires (the ill-fitting Howard Schnellenberger, then the overwhelmed John Blake). But Stoops had led them to a decent 7-5 campaign in 1999, and with quarterback Josh Heupel slinging the ball around more than 35 times per game — a huge average for both college football in 2000 and for a former option football capital like OU — the Sooners had a fun offensive identity. They were solid and interesting again, but how good were they, really?
There weren’t any lingering doubts after the Red River game against Texas. Quentin Griffin scored six times in 23 carries, and Rocky Calmus’ 41-yard pick-six made it 35-0 Sooners with 11:30 left in the second quarter. A three-point underdog heading in, OU cruised, 63-14, and moved up to eighth in the polls, its best ranking in nine years. Two games later — a 41-31 win at No. 2 Kansas State and a 31-14 home win over top-ranked Nebraska — the Sooners were No. 1, where they’d stay for the rest of the season. Another win over Kansas State in the Big 12 championship qualified them for the BCS title game, an eventual 13-2 Orange Bowl win over Florida State. In just two seasons (and with no help from the transfer portal), Stoops had not only stopped OU’s slide but brought the Sooners all the way back to prominence.
Most of college football’s history has produced reasonably predictable results at the top. That’s certainly true of the current era: Of the past 11 national champions, only one was ranked outside the preseason AP top 5: LSU, which won the title in 2019 after starting out way down in sixth. Auburn’s 2010 title is the only one in the past 22 years to come from a team that began the season ranked lower than 11th. Of course, lest you think previous eras were welcoming to underdog runs, it’s important to note that since the AP preseason poll began 75 years ago, only six eventual champions began the season unranked, and only 12 started outside the top 15.
OU’s 2000 run ranks pretty high on the list of unexpected titles, but who can top the Sooners? Looking at the past 75 years — and sticking to the 86 teams that finished No. 1 in either the AP or UPI/coaches’ polls (sorry, 2017 UCF) — here are the 20 most surprising and unlikely title runs. For each team, I’ll list its preseason AP rank, its average SP+ ranking over the previous five years and, as a way of looking at how unexpected its title push remained as the year unfolded, the number of weeks it spent at No. 1 in the AP poll before the final rankings.
5-year average SP+ ranking: 17.6
Preseason AP rank: 9
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 0
In the nine seasons since Bear Bryant’s retirement, Alabama had remained mostly solid, with five top-15 finishes and only one losing season, but neither Ray Perkins nor Bill Curry could escape Bryant’s shadow. Gene Stalling’s Crimson Tide went 11-1 in 1991 and began 1992 in the top 10, but some close wins — and the specter of a dominant, nearly wire-to-wire Miami — kept the hype tamped down. Still, Bama outlasted Florida in the first SEC championship to earn a shot at Miami in the Sugar Bowl, and the Tide shocked the world with a dominant 34-13 win.
5-year average SP+ ranking: 20.8
Preseason AP rank: 11
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 2
After Bobby Bowden’s retirement in 2009, FSU had rebounded under Jimbo Fisher, going 31-10 in three years. But the Seminoles had failed to meet preseason expectations in 2011 and 2012, and there was reason for skepticism in 2013, especially with Fisher electing to start a redshirt freshman quarterback named Jameis Winston. But the Noles romped through the regular season unbeaten — average score of their first 13 games: 53-11 — and a comeback win over Auburn in the BCS title game capped a surprisingly dominant title campaign.
5-year average SP+ ranking: 27.0
Preseason AP rank: 15
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 1
Auburn had established a nice rhythm of seven- or eight-win seasons and Gator Bowl appearances under Ralph “Shug” Jordan, but the Tigers were less than a decade removed from an 0-10 campaign in 1950, and they were banned from the postseason for NCAA violations. Even still, in 1957, they allowed just 28 points all season, setting the tone with a 7-0 shutout of No. 8 Tennessee in the season opener. And with everyone else near the top of the polls losing, they wrapped up the No. 1 ranking in the AP poll with a 40-0 pummeling of a dismal Alabama team. (In a way, the joke was on the Tigers: Bama responded by hiring Bear Bryant.)
5-year average SP+ ranking: 11.6
Preseason AP rank: 17
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 0
Woody Hayes had a way of sneaking up on you. His Buckeyes would peak around just the right collection of experience and talent, then they would start over and disappear for a bit. They won the 1954 national title but went just 7-2 and 6-3 over the next two seasons, barely sneaked into the 1957 preseason polls and then disappeared altogether after an opening-week loss to TCU. The Buckeyes then won their next six games by an average of 33-7 and finished the season with wins over No. 5 Iowa (17-13) and No. 19 Michigan (31-14). With AP No. 1 Auburn ineligible for the postseason, just enough UPI voters felt the need to lean in another direction, and the Buckeyes got the nod.
16. 1968 Ohio State Buckeyes
5-year average SP+ ranking: 27.4
Preseason AP rank: 11
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 2
Hayes and the Buckeyes limped through a sustained period of mediocrity (by their standards) in the 1960s, averaging basically a 6-3 record with only one top-10 finish between 1962-67. In 1967, they boasted immense and obvious talent — All-America tackles (and future first-round picks) Dave Foley and Rufus Mayes, running back Jim Otis — and a 13-0 win over top-ranked Purdue sent them on their way. They finished the season pummeling No. 4 Michigan 50-14 and easing past No. 2 USC 27-16 in the Rose Bowl for Hayes’ first perfect season in 14 years.
5-year average SP+ ranking: 21.4
Preseason AP rank: 9
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 0
Bob Devaney enjoyed immediate success when he arrived at Nebraska in 1962, but the Cornhuskers slipped a bit, going 6-4 in both 1967 and 1968. They rebounded to 9-2 in 1969 and tied No. 3 USC on the road early in the 1970 season, which certainly hinted at upside. But any hopes of a first national title required both No. 1 Texas and No. 2 Ohio State to lose their bowl games. Done and done. Stanford upset Ohio State in the Rose Bowl, Notre Dame thumped Texas in the Cotton Bowl, and a 17-12 win over No. 5 LSU in the Orange Bowl earned NU its first ring.
5-year average SP+ ranking: 29.0
Preseason AP rank: 20
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 4
Syracuse had enjoyed two top-10 finishes in the past three years, but Ben Schwartzwalder had to replace a ton from his eight-win 1958 squad. As it turned out, the replacements were awfully good. Syracuse boasted five All-Americans that season, including unanimous All-American Roger Davis and future Heisman winner Ernie Davis. The offense scored at least 29 points in nine of 10 regular-season games, while the defense allowed more than eight points just twice. With a number of SEC heavyweights picking each other off, a 20-18 win at No. 7 Penn State bumped Cuse to No. 1, and a season-ending blowout at No. 17 UCLA kept them there.
They took down No. 4 Texas in the Cotton Bowl for good measure. This was one of the best teams of all-time, and it came out of relative nowhere.
5-year average SP+ ranking: 31.4
Preseason AP rank: 14
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 0
Before Nick Saban was hired in 2000, LSU had enjoyed a single top-five finish in its previous 38 seasons and had bowled only three times in 11 years. This was a sleeping giant that seemed increasingly difficult to awaken. Saban engineered a 10-win season in 2001, but his Tigers slipped to 8-5 in 2002. Thanks to a midseason loss to unranked Florida — and a wire-to-wire regular-season run by Oklahoma as the No. 1 team — the Tigers remained under the radar for most of 2003; they didn’t enter the top five until mid-November and needed a gutty 17-14 win over Ole Miss to reach the SEC championship. But they pummeled Georgia in Atlanta, then shut down OU’s offense in a 21-14 Sugar Bowl win to earn a share of the national title with USC.
12. 2002 Ohio State Buckeyes
5-year average SP+ ranking: 14.6
Preseason AP rank: 13
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 0
It’s almost impossible to fathom, but Ohio State finished unranked for three straight seasons between 1999-2001; the John Cooper era ended in rocky fashion, and Jim Tressel went just 7-5 in his first season. But with All-Americans Matt Wilhelm, Mike Doss and Chris Gamble on defense and a heaping helping of freshman star Maurice Clarett on offense, the Buckeyes scraped out a number of tight road wins and edged No. 12 Michigan 14-9 in the regular-season finale. They were 12-point underdogs against Miami in the BCS championship — which made this title feel unexpected all the way until the very end — but a 17-0 midgame run, a controversial flag and a second chance in overtime got the job done.
11. 1954 Ohio State Buckeyes
5-year average SP+ ranking: 20.6
Preseason AP rank: 20
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 3
Woody Hayes’ first title in Columbus might have been his most surprising. He had begun his Ohio State tenure just 16-9-2, and promising 1951 and 1953 campaigns had ended in disappointment. But led by six All-Americans, including halfback Howard “Hopalong” Cassady, the Buckeyes found little resistance in 1954. After tight early wins over No. 18 Cal (21-13) and No. 13 Iowa (20-14), they thumped No. 2 Wisconsin (31-14) and won their last four regular-season games by a combined 89-20. They wrapped up the title with a 21-7 win over No. 12 Michigan, then thumped USC in the Rose Bowl for good measure.
5-year average SP+ ranking: 67.8
Preseason AP rank: 9
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 4
Between 1966 and 1979, seven blue-blood schools — Alabama, Nebraska, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Texas and USC — scooped up all but one national title. The lone exception? A Pitt team that entered 1976 with just one top-10 finish in its previous 37 years and a 1-10 campaign just four years earlier. Tony Dorsett’s 2,021 yards from scrimmage paced the Panthers, and a season-opening blowout of Notre Dame in South Bend shot them up the rankings. They played only one game all year that was decided by single digits, and after moving to No. 1 in mid-November, they thumped No. 16 Penn State (24-7) and No. 5 Georgia (27-3) to wrap up a strangely easy title.
9. 2010 Auburn Tigers
5-year average SP+ ranking: 20.0
Preseason AP rank: 22
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 1
After more than a half-century without a real title*, Auburn finally achieved another one with one of the most lightning-in-a-bottle seasons in college football history. The Tigers had gone just 13-12 in their two previous seasons, and they would go 11-14 over the next two, but in between they played 14 games with Cam Newton at quarterback and won all of them, seven by just one score. It was one of the more clutch runs we’ll ever see; teams on these types of runs usually falter well before the national title game, but Newton’s Tigers did not.
(* Yes, Auburn claims four titles from between 1957 and 2010, but that doesn’t mean I have to acknowledge them as legitimate.)
5-year average SP+ ranking: 16.6
Preseason AP rank: unranked
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 3
In terms of pure name value, this was easily the most unlikely title of all time. A mid-major, religiously affiliated private school in Utah? It’s hard to imagine a greater usurper than that. Still, the Cougars had been good for a while, having finished ranked in five of the previous seven seasons, and they were coming off their first ever top-10 campaign. As you can see from the five-year SP+ averages, each of the teams above them on this list had played far worse ball in the years running up to the title.
A load of key graduations rendered the Cougars unranked to start 1984, but a season-opening road win at No. 3 Pitt had them back in the top 10 by Week 3. It took a couple of tight road wins and an extremely messy run of losses from top teams, but BYU moved to No. 1 after a win at Utah and took down Michigan 24-17 in the Holiday Bowl to win the ring. The sport’s powers didn’t like it very much, but they shouldn’t have lost the games they lost.
5-year average SP+ ranking: 52.0
Preseason AP rank: 19
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 6
The 25th-anniversary champs’ slot in here. It was a genuine sign of progress that Stoops’ Sooners had gone 7-5 in 1999, and 7-5 was worse than any record they produced between 1970 and 1991. But the offense clicked early, and the defense found another gear as the offense slipped late. They moved to No. 1 heading into November, saw out a number of tough challenges and toppled Florida State in one of the more defense-heavy title games we’ve seen.
5-year average SP+ ranking: 41.0
Preseason AP rank: unranked
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 1
Clemson had gone just 14-9 in young head coach Danny Ford’s first two seasons, hinting at major defensive upside and pummeling a couple of ranked teams but struggling with consistency. The Tigers were unranked heading into their Week 3 matchup with Herschel Walker and No. 4 Georgia, but a 13-3 upset of the defending champs triggered a rapid rise. They were ranked second heading into November, and they moved to No. 1 for the first time ever following top-ranked Pitt’s blowout loss to Penn State. They were four-point underdogs against No. 4 Nebraska in the Orange Bowl — a sign that they weren’t being taken seriously enough — but a 22-15 win gave them their only title until 2016.
5. 1958 LSU Tigers
5-year average SP+ ranking: 49.6
Preseason AP rank: unranked
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 5
In the late-1950s, the SEC was loaded with defense-heavy teams that took turns at the top. A year after Auburn surged to a title, it was LSU’s turn. Paul Dietzel had gone just 11-17-2 in his first three seasons in Baton Rouge, and the Tigers hadn’t finished ranked in a decade, but Dietzel mastered the platoon system, and LSU won its first five games by an average of 26-4. With future Heisman winner Billy Cannon leading the way, they moved to the top spot in November, beat No. 6 Ole Miss 14-0 and survived a 7-6 trip to Mississippi State to win out.
5-year average SP+ ranking: 58.0
Preseason AP rank: unranked
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 2
From 1957-61 — three years under Don Clark and the first two under John McKay — USC had gone a combined 21-27-2 with only one winning season. The Trojans had only enjoyed two top-five finishes in the 25-year poll era, and they had won only one Rose Bowl since 1944. After becoming a sudden powerhouse in the late-1920s, the program had waned. But then, poof, the Trojans were awesome again.
Led by All-America end Hal Bedsole and quarterback Pete Beathard, they opened the season with a 14-7 win over No. 8 Duke and allowed just 5.5 points per game in the regular season. They slipped by fellow unbeaten Ole Miss, a dominant team enduring a tumultuous fall on campus, in the polls in late-November. And after claiming the title, they went out and won a glorious 42-37 track meet against No. 2 Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl.
5-year average SP+ ranking: 45.4
Preseason AP rank: unranked
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 0
A smaller private school in Coral Gables with a nondescript football history, Miami famously considered dropping the sport in the late-1970s. It hired Howard Schnellenberger instead. Good call. The Hurricanes won nine games in both 1980 and 1981, but a 7-4 campaign in 1982 threw everyone off the scent once more, as did the fact that they headed into 1983 with a redshirt freshman (Bernie Kosar) at QB and lost their opening game, 28-3, at Florida. They won their next eight by an average of 36-8, however, and after comfortable wins over both No. 13 Notre Dame and No. 12 West Virginia, they suddenly found themselves in the top 5 for only the second time ever. And with a shocking 31-30 upset of an all-time great Nebraska team in the Orange Bowl, they completed one of the sport’s most unexpected title runs, one they backed up with three more national titles over the next eight years.
5-year average SP+ ranking: 47.2
Preseason AP rank: unranked
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 0
Over the previous 17 seasons heading into 1990, Georgia Tech had seen more one-win seasons (two) than ranked finishes (one). Bobby Ross had built some momentum, jumping from 3-8 to 7-4 in his third season in charge, but no one thought much of the Yellow Jackets heading into 1990.
It took a while to change that. They were still just 16th in the AP poll on the first Saturday of November, but a classic 41-38 victory at top-ranked Virginia gave them a serious boost. They were second behind Colorado at the end of a wild regular season, and the Orange Bowl passed on a potential No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup, instead choosing a Notre Dame team with a lower ranking and bigger brand power. The Sugar Bowl, meanwhile, had locked into an arrangement with Virginia back when the Cavaliers were still No. 1; UVA was unranked by the time the Sugar Bowl actually rolled around. (For all the problems a playoff system can offer, never forget that giving all the power to bowls and bowl executives was infinitely worse.) Tech instead pummeled No. 19 Nebraska in the Citrus Bowl. Combined with Colorado’s controversial win over the Irish, however, that was enough to snag the top spot in the UPI poll.
5-year average SP+ ranking: 52.8
Preseason AP rank: unranked
Weeks at No. 1 (AP): 2
Unlikely … undeserving … take your pick. It would take a few more years before national titles were rewarded after bowls, but Minnesota provided a pretty good case study for why it would be desirable.
Murray Warmath’s Gophers had gone just 7-20 over their three previous seasons, but they rose to third in the AP poll after a 6-0 start, then jumped to first with a 27-10 win over top-ranked Iowa. With the national title in sight, they faltered, falling 23-14 to a 2-4-1 Purdue team that was riding a three-game losing streak. That dropped them to fourth, but when new No. 1 Missouri lost to Kansas (sort of), Minnesota hopped right back to first with a 26-7 win over Wisconsin. And then they lost to Washington in a turnover-laden Rose Bowl. That made them the first and only two-loss AP national champion until 2007.
It was unlikely that Minnesota would rise as far as it did after such poor play in recent seasons, and it was unlikely that the Gophers would jump back to first once they had fallen. But the banner hangs all the same.
