With the national championship game looming on Monday, one major plotline has been the losses these teams had, and how in any prior format it would have kept them from having this chance. With a Notre Dame loss to Northern Illinois, and Ohio State losing to a middling Michigan team, a 12 team playoff gave them the chance to prove they were actually the 2 best teams. With that being said, let’s see how these stack up to losses of prior champions.
For these purposes, we will obviously be skipping any undefeated teams. This will also only count the worst loss in a given year, for the handful of 2 loss champs. I’m going to categorize these into 4 categories. And finally we have the Actually Bad losses which are just confusing. Next, the Fuck Around and Find Out losses, where they lost to an ok team because something wasn’t working. Then we have Losses to Good but Not Great Teams. Finally will be the teams that lost to other top 10 teams, Games Someone Had to Lose. All rankings will be end of season, and I will not be looking at retroactive champions, so anything before 1924, sorry.
Actually Bad
2004 USC – How’re you gonna lose to the fucking NCAA?
1990 Colorado – Their worst actual loss was to a top 25 Illinois, but we’re counting the Fifth Down Mizzou game here.
Fuck Around and Find Out
2016 Clemson – Sometimes you get hit by the Pitt Superweapon. This is bordering on actually bad for the Peter Man alone.
2014 Ohio State – Lost to a 7-6 Virginia Tech, who doesn’t make a bowl without this win, almost missed the playoff if the Big 12 didn’t get too cute.
2007 LSU – Somehow lost to 2 8-5 teams, 2007 was devil magic.
2003 USC – Lost to Cal.
1977 Notre Dame – Lost to 6-5 Ole Miss, because for some reason Joe Montana sucks in practice so Rusty Lisch was the starter.
1975 Oklahoma – lol lost to Kansas.
1974 USC – lost to Arkansas, only even makes this list because Oklahoma was on probation.
Losses to Good but Not Great Teams
2008 Florida – Lost to #14 Ole Miss, also gave us the Tebow speech.
2003 LSU – Got Zooked by #24 Florida
1982 Penn State – #17 Alabama.
1978 USC – Gave too much Consideration to #19 Arizona State.
1965 Alabama – How did a 6-4 Georgia finish 15th?
1960 Minnesota – Sure why can’t 4-4-1 Purdue be ranked 19th?
Games Someone Had to Lose
2021 Georgia – Lost to #3 Alabama in the SEC Championship, more than avenged it in the playoff
2017 UCF – Wasn’t good at football 100 years ago, was stuck in the AAC
2017 Alabama – Lost the iron bowl to #10 Auburn
2015 Alabama – Lost to #10 Ole Miss. We’re going to see a lot of Alabama with a single top 10 loss in here.
2012 Alabama – Got Manzieled, see above.
2011 Alabama – Lost to and then beat #2 LSU.
2006 Florida – Lost to #9 Auburn.
1996 Florida – Lost a game of the century to #3 Florida State, remember when Florida used to be able to sustain 3 great teams at once?
1993 Florida State – Lost a game of the century to #2 Notre Dame, this championship is bullshit and should be ND’s.
1989 Miami – Lost to #2 Florida State, this is also bullshit and at least one of this or ’93 should be ND.
1985 Oklahoma – Lost to #9 Miami.
1983 Miami – Lost to #6 Florida, Miami has entered the Alabama zone of showing up too much.
1978 Alabama – Lost to #2 USC. You’d think with a head to head we wouldn’t need a split and yet.
1973 Alabama – Will not be recognizing this championship, but wanted to point out they lost to the undefeated champion Notre Dame in a bowl game, rankings were dumb.
1965 Michigan State – Lost the Rose Bowl to #4 UCLA
1953 Maryland - #4 Oklahoma
1951 Tennessee - #3 Maryland
1950 Oklahoma - #7 Kentucky, Bear Bryant is a Problem.
1942 Ohio State - #3 Wisconsin
1936 Minnesota – Congratulations to #7 Northwestern for finding a way onto the list.
1931 USC – The initial goal here was to find a G5 level loss and while I guess this Saint Mary’s loss counts, they went 8-2 and finished 5th.
For the purposes of this season, I would put Michigan as FAFO and NIU as an actually bad loss. Which means Ohio State would be abnormal and Notre Dame would be actually historic.