I think the difference is that the SEC has more, better teams, than the Big 8 did. It is much harder to go undefeated now, when you consider the number of teams in the conference and the conference championship games.
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I think the difference is that the SEC has more, better teams, than the Big 8 did. It is much harder to go undefeated now, when you consider the number of teams in the conference and the conference championship games.
You're absolutely correct. Even during the bowl losing streak, I believe it was from 1987-1993 we played the team that either finished #1 or #2 in the bowl game almost every single one of those years. Any team would have had a bad record playing those teams.
Of course they do, there's 8 teams vs 14. The quality of those teams isn't any better though. In the Big 8 there was a lot of times where another Big 8 team was having a really good year, and there was generally at least 1 or 2 other teams that were ranked. Plus you played every team in the conference. You couldn't get away with playing NW Chattanooga St in November. Three teams went undefeated this year by the time the playoffs started. Don't think it's any harder to go undefeated now than it was back then.
So maybe you're admitting that much of the Big 8 may have been howdy dowdy back in those days, because Nebraska abused those schools every year.
You are insane if you honestly believe that the Big 2 and little 6 was as tough as any P5 league right now.
I didn't say that. I said they had just as high of quality of teams. Just not as many of them as they do today.
True but had some help as Bama had no real depth this year on the OL which really hurt them.
How many Schools did Saban coach at to compile his record? 4. Osborne was HC for 25 years at only one school which is a lot harder to do than jumping from school to school as most would never last that long and have the kind of record Osborne did and accomplish all he did.
Not necessarily. With only 8 teams in the conference, you had to play everybody instead of only half the conference now. You still play a similar number of total conference and out of conference games as you do now. If it was more difficult to go through the season undefeated, we would see more teams finish the regular season with at least 1 loss. That wasn't the case with 3 teams finishing the regular season undefeated this year.
Playing everyone in the league is irrelevant. Also, no one was talking about finishing the regular season undefeated. They were surprised the Saban has only had one undefeated season total.
From 1970 to 1991, when the bowls had tie ins and there was no attempt to match the top 2 teams, in 22 years there was 17 undefeated teams.
In the 3 years of the Bowl Coalition, 1992-1994, there were 4 undefeated teams in those 3 years.
In the 3 years of the Bowl Alliance, 1995-1997, there were 3 undefeated teams in those 3 years.
In 16 years of the BCS, 1998-2013, there were 12 undefeated teams in those 16 years.
In the 5 years of the CFP, there has been 1 undefeated team, Clemson this year.
Since 2005, when Texas beat USC, 14 years there have been 6 P5 teams that finished the season undefeated.
If we are talking about undefeated regular seasons, Saban has had 4 since 2008.
When you have to play 15 games vs the 13 it took previously to win a national title, of course it's going to be harder to go undefeated, especially when those extra 2 games are against excellent opponents. That's why it's more fair to compare the regular seasons in determining the relative strength of conferences. And there were 3 undefeated teams prior to the playoffs this year. I don't think it was too often that there were 3 undefeated teams in the 70s, 80s or 90s.