Best of the Rest

In this post, I want to compare some of the best performances from teams outside power conferences since 1980. BYU's 1984 national championship remains the high-water mark for non-power conference teams in the modern era, but I was curious how that season measured up against other performances from non-power conference teams over the years, most notably those of the "BCS Busters" from the second half of the BCS era.

To demonstrate how unique BYU's 1984 season was, I've made the following chart depicting undefeated seasons by non-power conference teams dating back to 1980.

One of these teams won the national championship. Three of them never ranked higher than #5 in the final AP poll.

The undefeated season that secured a national championship for BYU was less than impressive not only by power-conference standards, but by non-power conference standards as well. Even more impressive was that BYU was already ranked #1 prior to its bowl game, whereas teams like 2008 Utah and 2010 TCU didn't even ascend to #2 until after defeating Top-5 teams in their respective bowl games.

To be fair, there were extenuating circumstances that likely contributed to BYU being awarded the championship. By the time they had beaten Michigan in the Holiday Bowl, BYU had reeled off 24 consecutive wins dating back to Week 2 of the 1983 season. They were almost certainly receiving credit for their previous season's run, in which they defeated Missouri, UCLA, and 10-win Air Force. Additionally, BYU was already the last remaining undefeated team by the time of the November 20, 1984 poll. Helping matters still was that #2 Oklahoma would go on to lose its bowl game, and #3 Florida wouldn't even play in a bowl game due to its probationary status. Even then, BYU managed only 38 of 60 first-place votes in the AP Poll (and 28 of 40 in the Coaches' Poll). It was almost if BYU benefited from a sort of Brewster's Millions vote for "none of the above."

Until I researched other ranked finishes by non-power conference teams, I had assumed there was a longstanding "buyer's remorse" for awarding the 1984 national championship to BYU. 12-1 Air Force would finish the 1985 season ranked #8 with a resume similar to BYU's in 1984 (save for the sole loss, which was to BYU, appropriately enough), and 11-1 East Carolina would finish the 1991 season at #9 with victories over teams ranked #11 and #21 in the final poll. Even BYU would finish as high as #5 in 1996 with a gaudy 14-1 record, although they would still rank behind four other 1-loss power-conference teams.

There wouldn't be another undefeated non-power conference team until Tulane in 1998, and that passage of time—massive in college football years—may have had as much to do with the shift in voters' attitudes as anything. Not helping matters was the introduction of the BCS and its computer polls that same year, which would effectively prevent non-power conference teams from even getting selected for high-profile bowl games.

In an attempt to compare the best non-power conference seasons across eras, I devised a simple metric to determine the overall quality of a team's resume*^:

For each opponent Team A defeats, I award it 2 points for every power-conference team that opponent has beaten, and 1 point for every non-power conference team.

For each opponent Team A loses to, I deduct it 1 point for every power-conference team that opponent has lost to, and 2 points for every non-power conference team.

* For simplicity, I've ignored results of all FBS-FCS match-ups.
^ I've treated ties as a half-win, half-loss.

Tallying the points from these formulas gives us the overall team Rating, which I then divide by the total number of games Team A has played against FBS opponents to arrive at the Rating Per Game (RPG).

The chart helps to illustrate how the last decade has had a renaissance of sorts for non-power conference teams, as well as how pedestrian BYU's 1984 season was by comparison (not to mention Hawaii and NIU's BCS seasons). There are some other notable seasons included in the chart, such as 2003 Miami (OH), 1991 ECU, and even 2002 Colorado State, who beat two 9-win power-conference squads.

Let's see how this chart looks when we add in some power-conference teams that managed to secure BCS bids.

Oh, UConn. Mind you, for my rating system, a victory over a power-conference team is worth two points versus just one for a non-power conference team. The fact that 2006 Boise State scored a higher rating than 2007 Kansas despite beating six fewer power-conference teams demonstrates how good the two power-conference teams Boise State beat were (10-win Oregon State and 11-win Oklahoma), as well as how weak Kansas's power-conference wins were.

At some point in the future, I'll create a ratings chart for national champions, so that we can compare relative quality over the years.