The Latest from Tex Noel

Occassionally I host some data on here provided by college football stat historian Tex Noel.  You can find a few of his works here, available for download (mostly in word and excel format depending on the data).

I've just added another data set that you can find on the link (located in CFR's Features page) in excel format titled: TeamBestNC1936-2005.xls

For an explanation, here's Mr. Noel:

College Football fans and alums always have an on-going aguement---which team was the best at "Dear old Alma Mater!"

Would Oklahoma's 1956 squad, considered by many as one of the greatest in the history of college, be a better national champion than the 1985 eleven?  When Notre Dame won its last title in 1988 was it superior to the 1943 team?

How about the Minnesota team of 1940--how superior was it than the 1941 team, as these Golden Gopher units became the first college football team to win back-to-back AP titles. Florida State's 1999 team was the first one to be ranked first in the Pre-Season AP Poll and never relinquish its hold at No. 1--was it better than the 1993 team?

Until now, as with anything relating to college football, every fan had their say so with maybe only a handful of facts to support his claim.

The old cliche comparing teams is like apples and oranges...or Team A played less games than Team B from a respective school...so Team B had the advantage of more games to prove its worth.

To paraphase a quote that appeared in the Nov. 1982 College Football Researchers Association (CFRA) monthly Bulletin:
All that counts is the team that accomplished the most (highest) is the better team (regardless of the number of games it played.)

1st-N-Goal has compiled a compilation of NCAA Major College/1A National Champions (Consensus-Major, 1936-2005) of schools winning more two or more titles and ranked them amongist other champions from the same school--using 11 categories...ranking them based on the total number of titles won.

For example Notre Dame has claimed 9 national champions, [using AP, UPI, FWAA, NFFHF, USA TODAY CNN/ESPN selectors] so, each of its champions in the 11 categories were assigned a Point Value based on 9 for the highest...down to 1 for the lowest.  In contrast, Army won back-to-back titles in 1944-45, and its highest Point Value would only be 2, with 1 still be the smallest value earned.

This compilation isn't to see which team of the 17 schools that have won consensus championships is the greatest overall, but which is the school's best champion of All-Time.

As a teasor, here's one of the most ironic findings of the compilation: Both Alabama and Southern California claimed the top spot in 1978...and both school's highest Point Value were in that season.  It's an unusual finding given that "experts" consider the Trojans eleven of 1972 one of the greatest in the history of college football history.

Holding true-to-form, Nebraska's 1971 unit--always amongst those listed as a great team, was the highest ranked champion in that school's history.

Enjoy and any questions or comments, send them to me.

Tex/1st-N-Goal

Sounds cool, be sure and take a look.  The description above will make a lot more sense once you take a look at the data which takes only a few seconds to download.