Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I'll start closest to home with the Big Ten, 1984 final standings with AP Final where applicable:

• 7-2/9-3 Ohio State #13, got as high as #2
• 6-3/7-4 Illinois not ranked at any time during 1984
• 6-3/7-5 Purdue got as high as #14
• 5-3-1/8-4-1 Iowa #16, got as high as #5
• 5-3-1/7-4-1 Wisconsin, got as high as #20 (remember only a top-20 then)
• 5-4/6-6 Michigan State
• 5-4/6-6 Michigan, got as high as #3
• 3-6/4-7 Minnesota
• 2-7/2-9 Northwestern
• 0-9/0-11 Indiana

No great teams is the theme here.  This was during the Big Ten's brief experiment with playing 9 league games on a full round-robin schedule so each team played all the others.  

The league title was pretty cut-and-dried with the Buckeyes winning outright but if the Buckeyes had lost to Michigan it would have created a 4-way tie between the two of them, Illinois, and Purdue.  Not sure how the league would have broken that back then.  

The Buckeyes won the league title but with two losses (PU, UW) and they also lost the Rose Bowl.  In theory the Buckeyes were three plays from 12-0 and NC because all three losses were one-score games (by 5 in West Lafayette, by 2 in Madison, and by 3 in SoCal).  The flip side of that coin is that the Buckeyes weren't all that good.  If you played the season over again there is a good chance that Ohio State would beat Purdue and Wisconsin but lose to say Illinois and Michigan State.  


Michigan started their season with a win over #1 Miami.  That propelled them all the way to #3 (they had started #14) but the very next week they lost at home to Washington to drop back into the teens.  A few weeks later they lost at home to the Spartans to fall to 3-2 and dropped out of the rankings for good.  

Illinois (lost to IA, tOSU, M, and Stanford) and Purdue (lost to IA, IL, UW, Miami, and Virginia) were decent but not great.  

Iowa started out ranked and won their first game to move to #5 but then lost at home to PSU by a FG and followed that up by getting drilled in Columbus (45-26) and wasn't a factor in the NC race after that.  

Wisconsin had a rough start and was 3-3 in mid-October but finished with four wins and a tie in their final five regular season games to get them into the rankings then they lost to Kentucky in the HoF Bowl.  

1984 was South Carolina's best team ever, all the way up until Spurrier.

They were going to be ranked #1 for the first time ever, as they were #2 and #1 Nebraska lost....but the Cocks went limp, losing to 4-6-1 Navy by 17 points.  Carolina has still never been ranked #1.  Ever.  

I've asked my friend Harry Grimminger about his most disappointing moment as a Husker
he was a jr left guard on the 83 team that went for 2 in the orange bowl.
He says he most regrets a 4th and inches vs the Sooners in 1984 in Lincoln as a senior.  Didn't score inches away with 5:32 left in the game) and came away with a 17-7 loss vs the Sooners.

The loss ended Nebraska’s 27-game conference win string and the Huskers’ 21-game home-field win string and kept NU from clinching a fourth consecutive outright Big Eight title.

The Huskers won the stats handily – 19 first downs to nine, 373 total yards to 201 – but four key turnovers gave the Sooners the breaks they needed.

Normal long-distance charges likely applied.  

Update:

Always liked Jim Lampley, especially on boxing.  

Lampley was awesome in that role.   The sounds of teletype, typewriters and dot matrix printers in the background.  That was about your only tv source for real time scores and updates, until about 1989 when sportschannel and Headline News would produce a bu hourly segment featuring a 20something Van Earl Wright. 

Some decent AM radio syndication at the time too.

Now for @OrangeAfroMan 's SEC (remember this was before adding USCe and Arkansas:

• 5-0-1/9-1-1 Florida, #3
• 4-1-1/8-3-1 LSU #15
• 4-2/9-4 Auburn #14
• 4-2/7-4-1 Georgia
• 3-3/9-3 Kentucky, #19
• 3-3/7-4-1 Tennessee
• 2-4/5-6 Alabama
• 2-4/5-6 Vanderbilt
• 1-5/4-6-1 Ole Miss
• 1-5/4-7 MissSt

I want to start with Kentucky because they need to be dispensed with.  Their ranking is just another example of voters voting by losses.  Their overall 9-3 record looks good but it was a product of playing a complete crap OOC of Kent (finished 4-7), Indiana (finished 0-11), Tulane (finished 3-8), Rutgers (finished 7-3), and North Texas (1aa).  Looking top down in the SEC, Kentucky:

• Lost by 8 at home to Florida
• Lost by 26 at home to LSU
• Did not play Auburn
• Lost by 30 at home to Georgia

The fluke here is that they kept it close with Florida, the Wildcats were not a good team.  

Florida finished with three wins over ranked teams, they:

• Beat #14 Auburn by 21 at home
• Beat #17 FSU by 10 on the road
• Beat #19 Kentucky on the road by 8

Additionally, they started 0-1-1 then ripped off nine straight wins so there is an argument but

The argument against the Gators is that they were on probation, had to vacate their 1984 SEC Title, lost by 12 to Miami, and tied LSU.  

LSU tied Florida, lost to a mediocre Notre Dame team, lost to a horrible MissSt team, and went to the Sugar Bowl in Florida's place due to probation.  They got drilled by Nebraska.  

Auburn had a really weird year.  They finished 1983 11-1 and on a 10-game winning streak so they started 1984 at #1 but then lost their first two games (by 2 to Miami in Jersey and by 8 to Texas in Austin).  That dropped them to as low as #20 but then they won six straight to get to 6-2 and back up to #11 before getting taken behind the woodshed in the Swamp.  They also lost the Iron Bowl to a bad Alabama team and finished the season with a 6 point win over a mediocre Arkansas (SWC) in the Liberty Bowl.  

Georgia was the only other SEC team to finish above .500 in the league but their league losses were 27-0 in the WLOCP and by two scores at Auburn.  Additionally they lost OOC to USCe and GaTech then tied FSU in the Citrus Bowl.