The final college football polls are out and at least two fan bases have a reason to feel slighted.
Alabama fans are probably wondering why the Tide is eighth. The only losses were to National Champion LSU by five points and Auburn on the road without the Tide’s starting quarterback by three.
Georgia and Oklahoma, two teams ahead of Alabama, were beaten far more decisively by LSU and have losses to unranked teams, Georgia to 4-8 South Carolina and Oklahoma to five-loss Kansas State.
Texas fans should be upset that Utah is 16th in both polls while Texas is 25th in the AP and 26th in the coaches poll, even though the Longhorns beat the Utes decisively, 38-10, in the Alamo Bowl.
The polls were nice to the “little guys.” Seven Group of Five teams are ranked, including four from the American Conference. That’s more than the ACC, Big 12 and Pac 12.
In the 84 years of the AP poll since 1936, Michigan has finished in the final rankings (top 20 until 1988, top 25 since then) 61 times., Ohio State and Oklahoma 59 times each, Alabama 57 times, Notre Dame 55 times.
Ohio State has been the most consistent team. It has been nearly a century since the Buckeyes had back-to-back losing seasons. OSU was 3-4-1 in 1923 and 2-3-3 in 1924. In 108 years, Ohio State has had only eight losing seasons and in five of those years the Buckeyes were one game under .500.
Ohio State has the best all time won-loss percentage at .7295. That's just barely ahead of Boise State .7294 and Michigan .7292. It's so close that Boise and Michigan both would have been first if they had won their bowl games.
The rest of the top 10: Notre Dame .7281, Alabama .7267, Oklahoma .7255, Texas .7043, USC .6981, Nebraska .68960 and Penn State .68956.
Perhaps Boise with fewer than half the games played as the other teams should not be included in the rankings. Boise became a four-year school in 1968 and moved up to the highest division (1-A at the time) in 1996. If Boise is eliminated, Tennessee moves into 10th place.
