Why is it so much more difficult to go undefeated in CFB today than in the past?

Scholarship limitations, more games, many more different offenses.

More FBS schools to spread some talent around.

Those are the big reasons. Also the top programs have more early departures and more transfers than in the past, evening the playing field for the second tier.

Dude look at some of the schedules from the 60's and 70's and 80's.

Conference expansion, integration, etc. Bear Bryant in all his years had two undefeated seasons...one was against a bunch of whites dudes in 1961 and one was in 1979 where they played zero teams outside the South...no Big 10 teams, no Pac-10 teams.

That same year Bama won the SEC in 1979, the second place conference SEC team was Georgia at 5-1, they went 6-5 overall. SEC teams could dominate SEC teams but couldn't win out of conference.

Point is, people controlled their schedules...there wasn't this pressure to play other conferences and some didn't...you could create your reputation beating cupcakes...Bill Synder at KSU, Miami in their early days before the big title game...

I mean look at some schedules...the 1979 SEC schedule is one of the worst ever, the Pac-10 is better (goes to Texas the midwest), the Big8 is better.

But people learned that the key was to schedule nobody...you had two top dogs in each conference playing against mostly dogshite and they played 8-9 games and called it quits before the bowl game...and hope you got an opponent that was from your region.

That's the reality. I don't know why we romanticize the past...most everyone wasn't playing against any real good teams. 75% of the SEC and Big8 were total junk...same with the Big10. Same with the Pac-10.

You only lost if you were bold in scheduling...and some teams stayed home and some teams scheduled bold.

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Conference expansion, integration, etc. Bear Bryant in all his years had two undefeated seasons

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Three undefeated seasons. He went 11-0 at Alabama in 1966.

And some of those schedules weren't easy. Yeah...the '79 schedule was a cupcake, but in the 70s Alabama generally scheduled regular season match-ups against the likes of Notre Dame, Nebraska, and Southern California.

Just take a look at the first five games Alabama played in 1978:

vs. #10 Nebraska
@ #11 Missouri
vs. #7 Southern California
vs. Vanderbilt
@ Washington

Very good question in the OP. The scholarship limitations kicked-in in the early-to-mid 70's I think so it wasn't much of a factor for the '94-'02 time frame.

My best guess as to why this is would be the ascendancy of the SEC. From '94-'02 the SEC won 2 natty's (UF in '96 and UTenn in '98). From '03 through '15, the SEC has won 9 of the 12 (since USC's '04 was vacated). The SEC became so dominant nationally but also so competitive among itself.

Teams are worse now because of Early draft entries

1. Parity. There are many more great football teams these days.

2. More games. You used to play an 11 game regular season and then a bowl game (only the SEC and Big12 had conference title games for along time). Now you play 12, you play a conference title game, and in the CFP era up to 2 more games. It's a hell of a lot harder to go 14-0 or 15-0 than it is 12-0.

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Conference expansion, integration, etc. Bear Bryant in all his years had two undefeated seasons...one was against a bunch of whites dudes in 1961 and one was in 1979 where they played zero teams outside the South...no Big 10 teams, no Pac-10 teams

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Integration should have happened sooner all over the country - and the overt resistance to integration in the south was obviously shameful. But I always wonder what the hell people are talking about when they ONLY talk about the southern teams. Many of the northern teams that were supposedly integrated had a very small number of black players - a number that was capped by the administrations to keep their teams mostly white.

And FWIW the criticism implies Bama ran up their record against white teams when one of the weird curiosities about his tenure is how poorly he typically fared against some of the all white Texas based teams. The average fan has probably heard about the television fictionalization of the Bama/USC game but it ignores both that Bama won a healthy majority of the games in that series and that they were on the road to integration when a great black player on the Tennessee team a year before performed so well.

And as to your other comment?!?

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I mean look at some schedules...the 1979 SEC schedule is one of the worst ever

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1979
Auburn - Kansas State, Wake Forest, NC State
Alabama - Baylor
UGA - Wake Forest, Clemson, Virginia
KY - Maryland, Indiana
LSU - Southern Cal, Wake Forest, Rice, Colorado
Tenn - Notre Dame

1979
Arizona - Texas Tech
WSU - Ohio State
Oregon State - KSU
Oregon - Colorado, MSU, Purdue
Cal - Michigan
UCLA - Purdue, Wisconsin, Ohio State
USC - Minnesota, Texas Tech, LSU, ND

Those numbers seem pretty similar - especially if you are talking about the 79 SEC schedule as one of the "worst ever". What's up with that? Whenever I look into one of your claims it seems to always be some half truth or near falsehood. Are you just trolling the whole time? Seems like a waste of time.

LSU also played also played Tulane who was 9-2 that year, 3-0 v SEC.