ESPN Rates College Bluebloods

#4
#4
Grand Vol said:
Garbage list. Their "history" only goes back about 20 years except in selective cases.
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It's crazy to think Michigan has only won 2 NC in it's history and 1 of those was shared. They have a whole lotta wins though. I do understand having a team like ND or Nebraska, but ND is going on 30 years w/o an NC, Nebraska last won in 1997, same can be said for us. Georgia hasn't won crap since the early 80's.

Maisel went all the way back to 1901 to talk about Michigan, that's living in the past.

I'm with you GV, lists like these are BS and basically for fans to defend their teams.
 
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#5
#5
I think we should have been 10th. I don't really disagree with the rest of the top 10 but Florida, Georgia, and LSU are getting benefit from the past 20 years. And even still, Georgia really hasn't done all that much the past 20-25 years anyway except underachieve.
 
#8
#8
okla, nebraska, and nd stayed in the wilderness a heckuva lot longer than Tennessee. Can't wait for the season to start.:shakehead:
 
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#10
#10
uh... Bob Neyland?? I guess if you're going to put together a garbage ranking, you might as well flippantly use one of the greatest college football coaches of all time's name in the process.
 
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#14
#14
If I was making said list and in no particular order:

Bama
Notre Dame
OSU
Oklahoma
USC
Michigan
Texas
Nebraska
Penn State
UGA (historically, yes)
UT
UCLA

And maybe:

Stanford
Wisconsin
Clemson
FSU
Miami (though hot and cold throughout their history)
ATM

Hell, I'd even throw on the list based on historical lineage alone and way before LSU or Florida:

Army
Navy
GA Tech
Pittsburgh

Sorry Gator and Tiger fans, not seeing your programs being official "blue bloods" of the Division 1 world.
 
#15
#15
Some sports writer, or group of writers, gets ambitious and does an article like this every couple of years. Would be mildly interesting to compare which teams make the short list when, over the decades.

A real blue-blood list that included all of college football history would probably have to start with Yale, but you don't see them on the most recent list (or any of its recent predecessors) because Yale are no longer playing the big boy version of the college game. Doesn't make their blood any less blue, just makes the average sports writer forget about them.

If you checked a list of this sort from the 90s and early 2000s, you might not even see Bama on it (though Bama definitely deserves being on any such list), that's how short-sighted many of the writers can be.

Give it another 10 years. If Butch is taking us where many of us think, and all of us hope, he's taking us, we'll be back on the short list by then. Maybe with another national championship or two. Maybe even with a Heisman, if ESPN will stay the hell out of the way. :) :) :)

Go Vols!
 
#19
#19
Florida Gators: 110 years of football, 30 years of tradition
Georgia Bulldogs: Nobody's ever done less with more
LSU: Huh? Tennessee leads the series 20-9. And that's w/ LSU carrying a 4 game winning streak.
 
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#20
#20
The problem that you all have is (whether it is due to bias, ignorance, personal opinion, whatever) people do not group Tennessee with Ohio State, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, Southern Cal, Michigan, Alabama, etc.

They don't make that connection.

So, lists like these are going to tick you off. But, you travel outside of Tennessee and ask people to name traditional college football powers and they won't think Tennessee
 
#21
#21
99gator said:
The problem that you all have is (whether it is due to bias, ignorance, personal opinion, whatever) people do not group Tennessee with Ohio State, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, Southern Cal, Michigan, Alabama, etc.

They don't make that connection.

So, lists like these are going to tick you off. But, you travel outside of Tennessee and ask people to name traditional college football powers and they won't think Tennessee
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That wasn't the case 15 years ago. We would have been top 5 in this list. It's always relative to recent history.
 
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#22
#22
99gator said:
The problem that you all have is (whether it is due to bias, ignorance, personal opinion, whatever) people do not group Tennessee with Ohio State, Oklahoma, Notre Dame, Southern Cal, Michigan, Alabama, etc.

They don't make that connection.

So, lists like these are going to tick you off. But, you travel outside of Tennessee and ask people to name traditional college football powers and they won't think Tennessee
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I've lived all over the US and around the world, worked soldier-to-soldier close with a lot of Americans from every state in the union and all our territories.

In my humble experience, you are dead wrong.

Tennessee's a big name in college football. I'd put it about on par with Nebraska, just a step below the programs who claim 10 or more national championships (Yale, Princeton, Alabama, Notre Dame, USC, and Michigan), and on par with Oklahoma, Texas, Ohio State, and the aforementioned Nebraska.

Maybe military folk see college football different than civilians...but that's how they see it.
 
#23
#23
VFL-82-JP said:
I've lived all over the US and around the world, worked soldier-to-soldier close with a lot of Americans from every state in the union and all our territories.

In my humble experience, you are dead wrong.

Tennessee's a big name in college football. I'd put it about on par with Nebraska, just a step below the programs who claim 10 or more national championships (Yale, Princeton, Alabama, Notre Dame, USC, and Michigan), and on par with Oklahoma, Texas, Ohio State, and the aforementioned Nebraska.

Maybe military folk see college football different than civilians...but that's how they see it.
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You know how many Mount Rushmore of SEC head coaches discussions and things I have seen and Neyland's name doesn't get mentioned. People don't know. He'd make a great SEC storied episode.

We'll just have to agree to disagree, but the vast majority of people I have run into are surprised when they learn how high Tennessee is on the all time wins list.
 
#24
#24
99gator said:
...but the vast majority of people I have run into are surprised when they learn how high Tennessee is on the all time wins list.
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Well, there's your problem. You just gotta hang with people who know a bit more about college football. :)
 
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