No one gave the 98 team a chance to go undefeated and win it all, yet they did. FSU didn’t have their QB, but we didn’t have our best offensive player or our OC. Outzen had previously beaten a Florida team that only lost to the two eventual teams in the championship game. The SEC had as many ranked teams at year’s end in 1998 as they did in 1985. Tennessee beat all the ranked SEC teams in 1998, they only beat one in 1985. Tennessee beat 3 teams that made it to a BCS game in 1998. In 1985, we barely beat a losing Wake Forest team, and we were 3-1-2 until November when we played horrible Rutgers, Memphis (who we struggled against), Ole Miss, Vanderbilt, and Kentucky teams. Even including Miami, we played 6 teams that had a winning record and only won 3 of them. We played 8 teams with winning records in 1998 and beat them all. We only won the SEC in 1985 because Florida was on probation.
I don’t blame people for loving the 85 team. It was like the 2022 team in that it felt like a breakout after a long period of suffering, beat Bama, won a major bowl against a big name program. But I don’t understand how some treat the only national champion they will ever see as an afterthought.