ESPN ranks the top National Championship teams of the past 20 years
The calm before the storm is upon us, with a mere twenty-five days until the kickoff of the 2018 college football season. The folks at ESPN have some time before things heat up for all kinds of power rankings, and how championship teams from the past would fare against others is one of the college football world's favorite theoretical debates.
Naturally, ESPN analytics came up with a model that calculated offensive, defensive, and overall ratings of every championship-winning team from the past twenty years.
Per ESPN:
The model includes a giant network of all FBS college football teams that played approximately 15,000 games over 20 years and assigns each team to a game, score and home-field advantage indicator within each season. The network establishes a team's strength interrelated with every other team in the network and returns a rating measured in points above the average team (zero rating).
The analytics' favorite team was the Vince Young-led 2005 Texas squad.
1. 2005 Texas Longhorns
The 2005 Longhorns are the top championship team of the past 20 years in large part because they claim the best player of the past 20 years. Quarterback Vince Young, remarkably, didn't win the Heisman Trophy that season, but he produced one of the greatest individual seasons in recent college football history, culminating with one of the greatest individual game performances the sport has ever seen. In the 2006 Rose Bowl against heavily favored USC, Young completed 30 of 40 passes, rushed for 200 yards and delivered the game-winning play, an 8-yard touchdown dash on fourth down with 19 seconds remaining. That play defined the BCS era. And turned Young into a legend. Young wasn't the only star for Texas, which also boasted a top-10 defense. Michael Huff was the Jim Thorpe Award winner and, like Young, became a top-10 NFL draft pick. Linemen Jonathan Scott and Rodrique Wright were consensus All-Americans, as well. The '05 Longhorns never lost. And saved their best for the biggest stage. -- Jake Trotter
The '05 Longhorns were followed by '08 Florida, '01 Miami, '13 Florida State, '04 USC, and a triplet of Nick Saban led Alabama teams with Bobby Bowden's '99 Seminoles sandwiched in at No. 10.
As for Clemson, the 2016 Clemson Tigers ranked 12th which we found to be a bit low given the fact that the 2017 Alabama squad was ranked 11th. We would argue that the 2016 Crimson Tide team was actually better than the 2017 team, thus we surmise that Deshaun Waston and the Tigers would have defeated the Bama squad that knocked Georgia off last season in overtime.
12. 2016 Clemson Tigers
When the season opened, Clemson debuted a new motto, "Finish with no regrets." After coming up just short in the national title game against Alabama the previous season, the Tigers went into 2016 determined to win it all. With Watson returning to lead the way, along with Mike Williams, Wayne Gallman, Jordan Leggett, Christian Wilkins and Ben Boulware, Clemson was favored to make it back to the College Football Playoff. But Clemson had to overcome some uneven performances and a loss at home to Pitt in early November before making it into the top four. Then, it had to overcome Alabama in the national title game again. How that game ended ranks among the most exciting in championship game history. The lead changed three times in the fourth quarter, and Clemson got the final word when Watson threw the game-winning, 2-yard touchdown pass to Hunter Renfrow with 1 second left on a play called "Orange Crush." -- Adelson
See who else is on the list here at ESPN.com.