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This is his fixed AP final poll, note that this could almost be a realistic final poll today.

1) Notre Dame 9-0
2) Michigan 10-0
3) Southern Methodist 9-0-2
4) Penn State 9-0-1
5) Texas 10-1
6) Alabama 8-3
7) Penn 7-0-1
8) Southern Cal 7-2-1
9) North Carolina 8-2
10) Georgia Tech 10-1
11) Army 5-2-2
12) Kansas 8-1-2
13) Mississippi 9-2
14) William & Mary 9-2
15) California 9-1
16) Oklahoma 7-2-1
17) North Carolina State 5-3-1
18) Rice 6-3-1
19) Duke 4-3-2
20) Columbia 7-2

I had no idea Michigan once was a kind of national power.

https://tiptop25.com/champ1946.html

[img width=500 height=303.991]https://i.imgur.com/mvorQqb.png[/img]

Pictured above is the defining play of 1946's "Game of the Century": Notre Dame's Bill Gompers turning the corner on 4th down and heading for Army's goal line. But alas, he didn't make it. He didn't even reach the 2 yard line for a first down, and this game saw no other serious scoring threats, ending in a 0-0 stalemate.

Never before had a game been hyped as much as this meeting of #1 Army and #2 Notre Dame. Other games had been called "Game of the Century" in the past, but this was the first to be widely described as such by the press nationwide before the game. Army was the 2-time defending national champion, coming in on a 25 game winning streak. They had beaten Notre Dame 59-0 and 48-0 the previous 2 years, but Notre Dame's coach and players were back from the war, and when last they were on campus, Notre Dame had won the 1943 mythical national championship (MNC).

This game featured 3 Heisman Trophy winners, 3 Outland Trophy winners, and 10 Hall of Famers, not counting the Hall of Fame coaches on each side. Notre Dame claims MNCs for 1943, 1946, 1947, and 1949, and Army claims MNCs for 1944, 1945, and 1946. This was a true clash of the titans, an intersection of 2 of the greatest runs in college football history: Army going 27-0-1 1944-1946 and Notre Dame going 36-0-2 1946-1949.

I've always thought it was B.S. that the service academies were playing football during World War II.  A lot of military brainpower and leadership ability not contributing one damn thing to the war effort.

Oklahoma's history as a football power began in 1946. Prior to that, they rarely made waves nationally. They had been ranked in the 1938 and 1939 AP polls, and had there been an AP poll top 25 1901-1935, they likely would have been rated 3 more times. So in 45 seasons prior to 1946, they were top 25 just 5 times. After 1946, however, they became a top 25 fixture, and in fact they are probably the top football program 1946-present. How did they become such an overnight sensation out of nowhere? Cold, hard cash, of course.

The coach in 1946 was Hall of Famer Jim Tatum. He only stuck around that one season, but that was okay, because the school had really wanted to hire his assistant, Bud Wilkinson (at right in photo), in the first place. Also in the Hall of Fame, Wilkinson ascended to head coach and led Oklahoma to the top of the college football world. Tatum's 1946 recruiting class featured 9 players who would make All American lists during their careers. Oklahoma was a major player in the "black market" of football talent returning from the war. Recruits were matched up with "sugar daddies" who gave them money and bought them clothes. This was a system that Oklahoma continued, more or less, through the 1980s, despite the periodic affliction of NCAA penalties for cheating along the way.

Aww, shucks!  It was nuthin'!

Seriously, I think that the big players were already finding creative ways to pay players, and had been doing so for a long time.  The practice was pretty widespread.  Wilkinson's coaching buddies like Bear and Duffy surely were doing much the same thing.

But this gets to why I don't want to see OU join the SEC.  With a program that I think is relatively clean by the standards of top-25 programs, we're doing just fine in the Big 12.  But in the shark tank that is the SEC, OU would have to find ways to compete with the bigger, better sharks, and that would involve cheating and that would end up with us getting caught and being put on probation.

We aren't among the best at cheating without getting caught.  We are somewhat better than SMU was in the years leading up to its "death penalty," however.  I think.

Oklahoma finished 8-3 and #14 in 1946. By 1948, Wilkinson had them 10-1 and #5. This season he took them all the way to 11-0, though they finished #2 to Notre Dame in the AP poll. Wilkinson went 145-29-4 at Oklahoma 1947-1963, winning 14 conference titles. The school claims 3 MNCs for his time (this season is not one of them). Bud Wilkinson had played for Minnesota 1934-1936, when they won 3 straight MNCs, so he was used to it. His 47 straight wins at Oklahoma 1953-1957 are a seemingly unbreakable FBS record, and he ranks highly on the list for all-time major/FBS coaching win percentage.

This Oklahoma team was dominated by the 1946 recruiting class, now seniors. The one Hall of Fame player was end Jim Owens, a nonconsensus All American who is now best known as head coach of Washington 1957-1974. He went 99-82-6 there and won 3 conference titles, taking the Huskies to the Rose Bowl following the 1959, 1960, and 1963 seasons. Washington claims an MNC for 1960.

OU might have won a post-bowl poll had there been one in 1949.  Notre Dame didn't play in a bowl game, while OU beat LSU 35-0 in the Sugar Bowl.  As it was, the final (pre-bowl) AP results for the unbeaten teams were:
1. Notre Dame, 9-0, 2402 points
2. Oklahoma, 10-0, 2018 points
3. California, 10-0, 1900 points
4. Army, 9-0, 1838 points

I have learned a few things about the Old Days here, more than a few.  I hit 1949 obviously and still no face masks, even a single bar.  The ranked teams are starting to include only 3-4-5 programs that today are irrelevant.  Most of P5s now.  There is a good bit of passing by some teams but scores remain low in competitive games  (blowouts are still there).  The PAT has become more of a sure thing.  No 2 point conversion yet of course.

Some of the venues are already pretty large based on announced attendance.