North Carolina, Duke, UCLA, Kansas, Kentucky, and Indiana: college basketball has a clear and obvious list of teams at the top of the food chain. It’s a lot harder to define the cream of the crop in college football, though. For starters, national championships are a lot harder to count in college football. Auburn football has won anywhere between two and eight national championships, Texas has somewhere between four and nine Titles, even Alabama can be listed as having anywhere between twelve and twenty-three national championships. The Ivy League dominance in the early 1900’s doesn’t help sort anything out either. UCLA, Kentucky, and North Carolina are all on the podium for most national championships in college basketball; nothing crazy going on there. I polled a few people on who they thought the three teams with the most national championships in college football and got answers all over the map: Notre Dame, Florida, Texas, Miami, Florida State, USC, Oregon, Ohio State, Washington, Michigan, LSU, Miami, and one person even said Iowa. The actual top three teams? Princeton with fifteen, Alabama with seventeen, and the Yale Bulldogs are at the top of the list with eighteen championships; most of which came at the courtesy of my guy Walter Camp.
Just because there isn’t a clear cut list of Blue Bloods in football like there is in basketball doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Since there are six teams in basketball I cut the list at the top six schools in college football history as well.
So here we go, in no order, the official six Blue Bloods of college football:
NOTRE DAME
The Resume: 13 National Championships (4th) 7 Heisman winners (T-1st) 929 Total wins (5th) 105 Consensus All-Americans (1st)
I visited Notre Dame for the first time last fall, and it’s near-impossible to overstate how special of a place it really is. As cliché as it sounds, you can actually feel the history just being on campus. For a lot of people, though, the storybook lore of Notre Dame far and away exceeds the actual on field performance by the Irish in their lifetime. In my life, the high point of Notre Dame football was back in the Brady Quinn era. Notre Dame holds the distinction of most BCS/New Year’s Six bowl game appearances without a win, an almost unbelievable 0-8 record. They haven’t won a National Championship since the eighties, and the biggest game they’ve won in years was arguably the overtime win at home against Clemson a couple of years ago, and they ended up losing the rematch that same season in the ACC Title Game.
Let’s not be prisoners of the moment though, no matter how big the “moment” Back in the day Notre Dame was a bigger program than even Alabama is today. Before TV deals in billions and streaming services that allow you to watch any college football game in the country, Notre Dame was often the only college football game on national television. They might not have been America’s team, but all of America paid attention to the Irish.
With both the most Heisman winners and Consensus All-Americans all time, it’s impossible to argue that any other school has been home to more talented players than Notre Dame. They’re the most storied program in college football history, even if like me you’re not old enough to appreciate their full impact on college football.
ALABAMA
The Resume: 16 National Championships (2nd) 4 Heisman winners (5th) 942 Total wins (T-2nd) 83 Consensus All-Americans (4th) 29 Conference Championships
Alabama has had the good fortune of having the two greatest coaches in college football history coach for the Tide; twelve of their sixteen championships have come from either Bear Bryant or Nick Saban. The most surprising thing about Alabama is that their first Heisman winner was Mark Ingram Jr. in 2009, and they didn’t have a quarterback win the Heisman until Bryce Young this past season.
Alabama being in the top five of every major historical national statistic isn’t breaking news; it’d be more surprising if they weren’t. We don’t even need to look at national stats to highlight Alabama’s dominance, though, we can just stay right in the SEC. There have been ninety-six SEC football champions crowned since 1933 (as far back as I can find), and Alabama has won twenty-nine of them. They’ve won the best conference in the country more than 30% of the time, Alabama has a higher rate of winning the Southeastern Conference than Mickey Mantle’s batting average; MICKEY MANTLE! The next closest schools are Georgia and Tennessee, and Alabama has more SEC championships than those schools combined. Alabama has more national championships than any SEC school even has conference championships. It’s impossible to understate Alabama’s SEC dominance and place in college football’s hierarchy.
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
The Resume: 9 National Championships (T-6th) 6 Heisman winners (4th) 856 Total wins (T-12th) 82 Consensus All-Americans (T-5th) 39 Conference Championships
The total wins are admittedly lacking, but the championships, Heisman winners, and All-Americans are more than enough to lock USC in as a college football blue blood. Like Alabama, most of their national titles came under just two coaches. Most people my age associate USC’s football golden age with Pete Carroll, but the best coach ever in Los Angeles is actually John Mckay, who won four titles for the Trojans between 1960-1975.
The biggest glaring hole in USC’s listed resume is that there is no mention of Reggie Bush. Bush’s vacated Heisman trophy would put the Trojans at seven all-time winners, and into a four-way tie for first with Notre Dame, Oklahoma, and Ohio State. Bush would also bump USC up to 84 consensus All-Americans and into 4th place all time. They also had to vacate fourteen wins, the final two from 2004 and all their wins from the 2005 season; that would bump them ahead of Tennessee and Penn to 11th all time in total wins.
What’s crazy is even without Reggie Bush, you can argue that USC still has the best all-time running backs. Mike Garrett, O.J. Simpson, Charles White, and Marcus Allen all won the Heisman playing running back for USC. Factor in guys like Ricky Bell who was the first overall draft pick in the 1977 NFL draft, Mike Hull who led USC in rushing as a fullback on their way to the Rose Bowl, and Sam Cunningham who was so good that he is maybe the most influential college football player in history.
In 1970 an integrated USC team traveled to Birmingham to face an all-white Alabama team led by Bear Bryant. Sam Cunningham averaged over 11 yards per carry and scored two touchdowns as USC embarrassed Alabama in their own state. Bear Bryant had had discussions with the Alabama administration about integrating, but it just wasn’t something they were going to do, there was basically zero fan support for integration either.. I guess getting their brakes beaten off by USC was enough to push the Alabama administration over the edge though. The very next season John Mitchell and Wilbur Jackson became the first Black players to ever play for the University of Alabama.
USC might be most recognized now for the stranglehold they had on college football under Peter Carroll, but the sixties and seventies were really the golden years in Southern California football.
OKLAHOMA
The Resume: 7 National Championships (9th) 7 Heisman winners (T-1st) 931 Total wins (4th) 82 Consensus All-Americans (T-5th) 50 Conference Championships
The Sooners have had four quarterbacks win the Heisman this century (Jason White, Sam Bradford, Baker Mayfield, and Kyler Murray). Alabama is the only other school with four Heisman winners since Y2K. Alabama is actually the school that has the most in common with Oklahoma than any other program in a lot of ways. No programs want to win more than Oklahoma and Alabama, and that’s evident in the Sooner’s historical numbers. Two different coaches, Bud Wilkinson and Barry Switzer have each won three national Championships in Norman. Alabama, Notre Dame, and Yale are the only other schools that can match OU’s success under multiple head coaches.
Also like Alabama, the most impressive thing about Oklahoma’s resume is their conference dominance. No school in the country has dominated their conference like the Sooners, who have fifty conference championships in their history, an absolutely absurd number. For the majority of their history they had to compete with Nebraska, and they’ve been embarrassing Texas ever since they started playing football. Oklahoma has no natural advantage and yet they’ve been able to grind out championships and Heismans as well as any school in the country. They muscled their way into college football royalty, and might be the most impressive team on the list.
OHIO STATE
The Resume: 8 National Championships (8th) 7 Heisman Winners (T-1st) 942 Total Wins (T-2nd) 90 Consensus All-Americans (2nd) 39 Conference Championships
“Archie Griffin, Ohio State” is the answer to almost for sure the most impressive thing any college football player has ever done. The question: “Who is the only player to win the Heisman Trophy twice?” Griffin was the starting running back for the Buckeyes for all four years on campus, during which Ohio State went 40-5-1 and added four Big Ten titles. He became the first player to ever win the Heisman a second time, winning it back to back his Junior and Senior year in 1974 and 1975.
As far as national championships Ohio State got a relatively late start compared to other programs, not winning their first title until 1942, during the middle of WWII. Because so many programs had lost most of their players to deployment over fifty universities dropped college football before the 1942 season, and many of the programs that did keep football were forced to rely on freshmen either too young to be drafted or those excused from military service due to medical conditions. A championship is still a championship, though.
The next five Buckeye National Championships came under head coach Woody Hayes between 1951-1978. Ohio State wouldn’t win their next championship until the main man in the sweater vest, Jim Tressel, showed up and beat the defending champion Miami Hurricanes in 2002. Their last title came in the first ever college football playoff game, beating Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota and the Oregon Ducks.
Ohio State has played in a conference with Michigan and Penn State, three schools all in the top ten for most wins all-time (the most of any conference). They’ve been able to rack up wins, and conference championships, in one of the best conferences in the entire country. Having the second most Consensus All-Americans in history certainly hasn’t hurt their winning. The only thing they do in Columbus is win and produce All-Americans
MICHIGAN
The Resume: 9 National Championships (T-6th) 3 Heisman Winners (T-6th) 976 Total Wins (1st) 85 Consensus All-Americans (3rd) 43 Conference Championships
Coming into this I did not want to put Michigan on the list, but you can’t keep out the winningest program in college football. Even if they haven’t had much recent success, you can’t erase or ignore the success that they have had over time. The total wins is by far the most critical part of their resume, but they’ve also won more national championships and conference championships than their conference rival Ohio State.
Everything said about Ohio State would apply to Michigan, despite playing in one of the best conferences in the country they’ve managed to win over thirty games more than Ohio State and Alabama. Realistically one of those schools is going to catch Michigan in the next ten or fifteen years, but they haven’t caught the Wolverines yet.
If the list ended at five Michigan might have been the first team cut, but it’d be hard to put Ohio State ahead of them looking at their resume, and factoring in that everything they did was against Ohio State. While head to head doesn’t matter for our purposes, Michigan does lead the all-time series against the Buckeyes 59-51-6.
SCHOOLS THAT MISSED THE CUT
There are at least two other schools that have a legitimate argument to be among the top six all-time programs in college football. Had to cut the list somewhere though, here are the next two schools that didn’t make the list.
NEBRASKA
The Resume: 5 National Championships (T11th) 3 Heisman Winners (T-6th) 908 Total Wins (9th) 54 Consensus All-Americans (T8th) 46 Conference Championships
The Cornhuskers have a better resume than you might think, there just isn’t anything that stands out. They have fewer national titles than Minnesota, and five other schools have as many Heisman winners as Nebraska. Tom Osborne is really the only reason they’re even honorable mentions; the coach won three national championships and coached the 1995 team that’s considered by some the best team in history.
TEXAS
The Resume: 4 National Championships (T-15th) 2 Heisman Winners (T-12th) 928 Total Wins (6th) 61 Consensus All-Americans (7th) 32 Conference Championships
In a vacuum Texas has a fine football history, one that a lot of schools would trade for if they could. When you add the context that for their entire history they’ve been competing against Oklahoma, a school with no natural advantage to Texas, and that Oklahoma is significantly ahead of Texas in any historical or current metric you want to use then it makes it hard to say too many positive things about the Longhorns.
Somehow Texas leads the all-time head to head record against Oklahoma 62-50-5. Averaging less than one more win a decade against your rivals (plus a losing record since WWII) isn’t anything to hang your golden hat on. No program has been more disappointing over the last fifty years than the University of Texas, call me when they pass Oklahoma in anything.
-By Jake Cowden
Photo: Long Photography, USA TODAY Sports