re: Sporting News Top 20 CFB Teams of All-Time

Alabama 2020 LOLOLOL

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Those dudes on the '95 Nebraska team mostly played their role.

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Irving Fryar played for Osborne and he was the #1 pick in the draft as a WR. Johnny Mitchell was a first round TE. They weren’t just system players.

Plenty of Osborne’s skill guys had successful NFL careers. Roger Craig was just elected to the HOF.

No one wanted anyone from 1995 Nebraska’s receiving corps because they just weren’t very good.

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There was no stopping that '95 Nebraska team

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In the last regular season game of the year, 1995 Nebraska faced the only defensive front player (or player, period) who would go in the first round that year: Cedric Jones of Oklahoma.

In that game, Nebraska scored 23 offensive points. They did not score an offensive TD until the 4th quarter.

Stats for.,,

Frazier: 12/25, 128 yards, 1/1 passing, and 10 carries for 35 yards and 0 TD’s rushing.

Phillips: 15 carries for 73 yards and 0 TD’s

Green: 13 carries for 44 yards and 0 TD’s

Those are pedestrian numbers.

Just one elite defensive front player on a 5-5-1 team playing in Lincoln with the Heisman Trophy on the line for Frazier helped make a noticeable difference in Nebraska’s usual offensive output.

Now put three first rounders and a fourth rounder on the DL backed by thumpers like Tre Lamar and Isaiah Simmons (Butkus in 2019). Put A.J. Terrell (2019 first rounder) on any Nebraska WR they want to shut down.

Saying “Nebraska is great because Nebraska is great” doesn’t handle three All-American defensive linemen in the Real World.

Plus, Brent Venables cut his teeth at K-State and OU in Nebraska’s I formation era. He knew the Huskers inside-out. Plus, Clemson played Paul Johnson’s GT teams every year and the option game was nothing foreign to them.

Not only was 2018 Clemson an all-time great team, but (stylistically) they were very well suited to taking away what 1995 Nebraska did well.

They absolutely would slow them down enough for Lawrence, Etienne (who averaged more ypc than Phillips or Green, by the way), and Higgins, Ross, and Renfrow to outscore them.

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The closest they came to losing was a 14 point win over Washington State

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A 3-8 team.

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They beat Steve Spurrier's #2 ranked Florida 62-24 in the game that was for all the marbles. The closest that Florida team came to losing before Nebraska was two 11 point wins, vs. Auburn and FL State.

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1995 Florida was a great team, but they were poor defensively and soft everywhere.

Nebraska had success blitzing them because UF was running 10 and 00 personnel formations from under center. Speedy LB’s like Farley and Williams put pressure on Wuerffel. FSU did the same thing to UF the next year in the regular season before Spurrier finally went to the shotgun in the Sugar Bowl rematch. That helped a lot.

The blitzing of Nebraska would have been a lot more difficult against a Clemson offense that worked exclusively out of the shotgun, and Nebraska’s undersized LB’s (none of whom were NFL caliber) would have had a tough time with Etienne.

On defense, UF’s D was shite. Nothing higher than a third rounder for three years and no familiarity with the Nebraska scheme. They didn’t even have Stoops. UF also had a history of trouble against bigger backs like Jerome Bettis and Stephen Davis in 1993-1995.

2018 Clemson was night and day different from 1995 Florida.

I wouldn’t necessarily disagree with someone who said 1995 was Osborne’s best team, but I would definitely argue that they had an easier road for the season.

If you know anything about Big 8 football in the ‘70s-‘90s, Nebraska not having to fool with wishbone era OU was a huge break in the schedule. Even McCartney was gone from Colorado by then. The Big 8 was as smooth a road as it could be. Nothing but adding on to 25 game winning streaks against teams from Kansas.

OOC, they played no one who won more than six games. Lowly Pacific even folded the program the next year. In previous seasons, they played a lot of home-and-home against teams like Bryant’s Bama and Paterno’s PSU. Not in 1995.

In the bowl, Florida was a great team, but it was a lot easier to move the ball against them compared to all the Butkus Award winners and future NFL Hall of Famers that they had been facing and gave them problems.

I think the many of Osborne’s teams would have finished 11-0 in the regular season with the 1995’s schedule (who were they going to lose to, Kansas?) and the better ones likely would have worn down UF physically similar to 1995.

But when we’re talking 2018 Clemson, we’re talking about a team that is not just an all-time great but matches up very well against the Nebraska style due to having one of the best defensive lines in CFB history complimented by a balanced offense full of playmakers.

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22 Georgia aint top 50 either

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Are you retarded?

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2019 LSU almost lost to Albarn, and Florida had a chance to tie late. 2020 Alabama had an all-SEC schedule with no close games. Why is 2019 LSU ranked higher than 2020 Alabama?

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Are you serious? LSU beat something like 6 or 7 top ten teams, they blew out Georgia by four touchdowns in the SEC championship game, they demolished Oklahoma by five touchdowns in a game where we basically called off the dogs at the half with a 49-14 lead. Then preceded to blow out a Clemson team with a 29 game winning streak by 21 points, and we were driving for another touchdown late, and knelt out the clock.

We beat Alabama on the road, which is no easy task. And that Auburn game? The total yards were 508-287 in favor of LSU. It was raining all day, and it lead to some sloppy play that kept it closer on the scoreboard than it actually was in any other way.

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they beat 4 teams that ENDED the year with an average ranking of 5th/6th by an average of 31 points.

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This is surface level thinking that doesn’t take into consideration how much more top heavy college football talent is in more recent years compared to 1995.

The four top ten teams that 1995 Nebraska played did not put a single player into the first round of the draft the following spring. The only player they did play all year who was drafted in the first round (Cedric Jones, DL, OU) helped hold their offense to a season low in rushing yards and kept Frazier, Phillips, and Green out of the endzone, as I talked about in my previous post.

1995 Nebraska and all of its opponents combined put just 2 players into the first round after the season. 2019 LSU and its opposition put 18 in there. 2025 Indiana and its schedule just had 14 (16 if you count Oregon twice).

Teams today generally face a much higher concentration of college football’s best talent than did 1995 Nebraska.

Kansas finished #9 in 1995. Alabama finished #9 in 2019 with Tua and all those damn receivers. Does anyone think going into Kansas in 1995 was in any way comparable to going into BDS in 2019?

Of course not. They might be the same “on paper,” but certainly not in reality.

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05 USC > 04 USC its not even close really.

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What? I’ve never even heard any SC fan say this. The ’05 offense was better, but it was basically the same crew as the ’04 team, just with more experience. The difference was the defenses. The ’04 defense was dominant, #1 in the country in rushing defense, # 2 in scoring defense, and #5 in total defense. The ’05 defense was decent, but in the same categories I listed for the ’04 team, the ’05 team ranked 31st, 28th, and 46th, respectively. You can even throw in their 71st ranked pass defense that year.

Another example, in the most important drive of the season, Texas’ game winning one in the Rose Bowl, the Ting twins were on the field trying to help protect the SC lead. Those dudes would have never seen the field in ‘04.

The 1940-70's teams should be excluded. Nothing but a bunch of slow white guys beaing JV teams. 1993 LSU would've hammered all of them, and they were terrible. For fun, just imagine 2001 Miami going against all of those run oriented teams. Heck I'd throw in 1988 ND. Watch Charles Jefferson when the opposing HS vandalized his Camaro. That's what Miami would've done. Speed, physicality, and execution is what wins games. 200lb OL. Gimme a break

Army 1944 should be a lot higher. A 56-3 scoring margin on average.

All that being said, 2018 Clemson did only play 2 teams that finished the season ranked in the top 25 in the regular season and those were barnburners per the final score

Incinerating an NC State team that barely missed the top 25 at the end notwithstanding, I am curious how you address this nit being picked - not in any bad faith more just noting

They’re getting the historical extra credit for their dominant playoff run until the natty game, they really should’ve blown Miami out in the natty game but it’s super hard to hold a Cristobal-coached talent-laden Miami team down.