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Next, let's take Ron Dayne.  About 1,200 carries and 5.8 ypc. 

But what we can do with this data is also state that if he 'only' had 1,000 carries, his ypc would have very likely been higher than 5.8.  He'd have had the leeway of it being higher - having not been bogged down by all those carries.  And the converse is true - if Dayne had been fed the ball more, he would have yielded diminishing returns, and his ypc would have decreased with 1400 carries.

But how do you justify this? Remember what I said about Dayne:

• 1996: 325 carries at 6.5 ypc (25 apg)
• 1997: 263 carries at 5.5 ypc (23.9 apg)
• 1998: 295 carries at 5.2 ypc (26.8 apg)
• 1999: 337 carries at 6.0 ypc (28.1 apg)

Wisconsin had 13 games in 96, 11 in 97 and 98, and 12 in 99. 

So let's remove 1999. He drops from 1220 to 883 carries. And his average with reduced carries? Drops from 5.84 ypc to 5.76 ypc. 

Oh, but you said he might get "bogged down" by carries. Then why is it that his two seasons of higher number of games and thus highest number of rushing attempts, 1996 and 1999, are his highest ypc average seasons? You'd think that extra wear and tear might bog him down. Why is it that there is NO correlation between rushing attempts per game and ypc? He had more ypc when being fed the ball 28.1 times per game than he did at 23.9 and 26.8 times per game, and his one season of higher ypc than that was right in the middle at 25 apg. Getting the ball more attempts per game didn't seem to correlate positively or negatively with his average ypc. 

This is a single player within a single offense, who had the same head coach all 4 years and the same offensive coordinator from 1996-1998. And yet there's no statistical evidence that his rushing volume had any relationship to his ypc average.

(It's possible, in fact, that from 1996 to 1998, his declining ypc average might have been due to usage--his OC getting lazy and just running Dayne into the middle of the line because he knew that Dayne would churn out the yards and move the sticks EVEN with the defense keying on him. And it's possible that when OC Brad Childress left for the NFL and was replaced in 1999, that the new OC changed scheme somewhat and that led to Dayne's ypc resurgence. But again, that would suggest that it's scheme, not volume, that impacts ypc.)

To jump to Sanders, I admit, we have no clue what HIS true mean for ypc would have been.  But we do know 344 carries is a lot.  We know 7.6 ypc is extremely high.  So how is it not logical to assume that his ypc would decrease (from a very high point) adding to an already-high number of carries?  How is that being invalid?

Now, in the case of Sanders I think we both agree that we don't know what HIS true mean would be. We do know that he's one of the most talented running backs ever to play the game, as evidenced by his NFL career. Moving up in competition he was an All-Pro selection every one of his 10 seasons, and one site that has attempted to adjust ypc averages for the era in which a player played says that he's 3rd place all-time in the NFL. 

And I'd be willing to admit my own bias is that it would drop from 7.6, because that is a VERY high point. Absurdly high. It's like your first scratch-off lottery ticket being a $50 winner--you don't expect that the next one will be because it seems that you've already beaten the odds. But that's my bias because of how high 7.6 ypc "looks" to me for a workhorse RB--if there were ever any player who might have come back for another season and put up higher numbers, it might be Barry Sanders. 

You're wanting to include RBs that are among the general consensus.  If we wanted that, we could simply look it up.  I want something fresh.  Yes, a list with names we wouldn't expect on it is useful.  It may even be better than the general consensus!
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Sigh.  NFL production.  I'm not sure how many ways I can say this - NFL PRODUCTION HAS NO BEARING ON A PLAYER'S COLLEGE MERITS.  HIS COLLEGE CAREER IS SEPARATE FROM HIS PRO CAREER.  To be fair, I should take the words "better" and "best" and never use them again. 
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Let's call this the "100 college RB careers that were the most productive", okay?

if you just want a most productive list, then you're in luck. the ncaa already has those lists. you've used one in this thread.

unless you want a straight statistical list, which is the ncaa list, then you'll need to apply contect (i.e. not including group 5 team players). nfl success shouldn't trump college, but it does give us some context in which to look at the college stats. same as era of play, surrounding talent, conference, coach style, etc. if you completely discount any of those contextual items, you're list will be... less than it could be. of course, this is all opinion, and you might hold a different opinion, which is fine. YOUR opinion isn't anymore valid than anyone else's, and vice versa. but if you want this to be a group project instead of you just waxing poetic, then maybe you should consider some of those other opinions as valid instead of just wrong or useless.

1. Jonathan Taylor, Wisconsin
2. LaMichael James, Oregon
3. Ricky Williams, Texas
4. Royce Freeman, Oregon
5. Ron Dayne, Wisconsin
6. Tony Dorsett, Pitt
7. Herschel Walker, Georgia
8. Anthony Thompson, Indiana
9. Mike Rozier, Nebraska
10. Archie Griffin, Ohio St
11. Cedric Benson, Texas
12. Justin Jackson, Northwestern
13. Dalvin Cook, Florida St
14. Myles Gaskin, Washington
15. Charles White, USC
16. Montee Ball, Wisconsin
17. Darren Sproles, Kansas St
18. Ray Rice, Rutgers
19. Melvin Gordon, Wisconsin
20. Ken Simonton, Oregon St
21. George Rogers, South Carolina
22. Trevor Cobb, Rice
23. J.K. Dobbins, Ohio St
24. Nick Chubb, Georgia
25. Michael Hart, Michigan
26. Avon Cobourne, West Virginia
27. Darren McFadden, Arkansas
28. Darren Lewis, Texas A&M
29. Marcus Allen, USC
30. Paul Palmer, Temple
31. Ted Brown, NC State
32. Lorenzo White, Michigan St
33. Thurman Thomas, OKlahoma St
34. Terry Miller, Oklahoma St
35. Anthony Davis, USC
36. Ameer Abdullah, Nebraska
37. Troy Davis, Iowa St
38. Kevin Faulk, LSU
39. Darrell Thompson, Minnesota
40. A.J. Dillon, Boston College
41. Damien Anderson, Northwestern
42. Jamie Morris, Michigan
43. Eric Dickerson, SMU
44. Bo Jackson, Auburn
45. Earl Campbell, Texas
46. Johnathan Franklin, UCLA
47. Ka'Deem Carey, Arizona
48. Javon Ringer, Michigan St
49. Samaje Perine, Oklahoma
50. Amos Lawrence, North Carolina
51. Stepfan Taylor, Stanford
52. Autry Denson, Notre Dame
53. Tyrone Wheatley, Michigan
54. David Thompson, Oklahoma St
55. Noel Devine, West Vriginia
56. Joe Morris, Syracuse
57. Travis Etienne, Clemson
58. Errict Rhett, Florida
59. Shock Linwood, Baylor
60. Byron Hanspard, Texas Tech
61. Tico Duckett, Michigan St
62. Allen Pinkett, Notre Dame
63. Amos Zereoue, West Virignia
64. Zach Line, SMU
65. Kendall Hunter, Oklahoma St
66. Ralph Webb, Vanderbilt
67. Anthony Thomas, Michigan
68. Lamont Jordan, Maryland
69. Rodney Smith, Minnesota
70. Robert Holcombe, Illinois
71. Christian McCaffrey, Stanford
72. Ezekiel Elliott, Ohio St
73. Zack Moss, Utah
74. Laurence Maroney, Minnesota
75. Warrick Dunn, Florida St
76. Adrian Peterson, Oklahoma
77. Dalton Hilliard, LSU
78. James White, Wisconsin
79. James Gray, Texas Tech
80. Joe Washington, Oklahoma
81. Ahman Green, Nebrsaka
82. Robert Lavette, Georgia Tech
83. Mike Voight, North Carolina
84. Steve Owens, Oklahoma
85. Darrin Nelson, Stanford
86. Chris Polk, Washington
87. Napoleon Kaufman, Washington
88. Charles Alexander, LSU
89. Chris Barclay, Wake Forest
90. Steve Slaton, West Virignia
91. Thomas Jones, Virginia
92. Jacquizz Rodgers, Oregon St
93. Emmitt Smith, Florida
94. Anthony Dixon, Miss State
95. Raymond Priester, Clemson
96. Saquon Barkley, Penn St
97. Leonard Fournette, LSU
98. P.J. Hill, Wisconsin
99. Tyrell Sutton, Northwestern
100. Benny Snell Jr, Kentucky
--------------------------
101. Eric Bieniemy, Colorado
102. Bryce Love, Stanford
103. Evan Royster, Penn St
104. Sedrick Shaw, Iowa
105. Yvenson Bernard, Oregon St
106. Billy Sims, Oklahoma
107. James Davis, Clemson
108. BenJarvis Green-Ellis, Ole Miss
109. Butch Woolfork, Michigan
110. June Henley, Kansas

Update.

https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/nfl/rb/2019

I didn't look at this in detail, but it's an effort to rank NFL runnings backs.

Running backs are ranked according to DYAR, or Defense-adjusted Yards Above Replacement. This gives the value of the performance on plays where this RB carried/caught the ball compared to replacement level, adjusted for situation and opponent and then translated into yardage. DYAR (and its cousin, YAR, which isn't adjusted based on opponent) is further explained here.
The next statistic given is DVOA, or Defense-adjusted Value Over Average. This number represents value, per play, over an average running back in the same game situations. The more positive the DVOA rating, the better the player's performance. Negative DVOA represents below-average offense. DVOA (and its cousin, VOA, which isn't adjusted based on opponent) is further explained here.
The simple version: DYAR means a running back with more total value. DVOA means a running back with more value per play.
Effective Yards, listed in red, translate DVOA into a yards per attempt figure. This provides an easy comparison: in general, players with more Effective Yards than standard yards played better than standard stats would otherwise indicate, while players with fewer Effective Yards than standard yards played worse than standard stats would otherwise indicate. Effective Yards are not the best way to measure total value because they are more dependent on usage than DYAR.
The final statistic is Success Rate. This number represents the player's consistency, measured by successful running plays (the definition of success being different based on down and distance) divided by total running plays. A player with higher DVOA and a low success rate mixes long runs with downs getting stuffed at the line of scrimmage. A player with lower DVOA and a high success rate generally gets the yards needed, but doesn't often get more. Success Rate is further explained here. It is not adjusted for opponent.

Yeah, none of that is available for historical college football stats, lol.

Thurman Thomas:

• 1984: 205 carries for 4.1 ypc
• 1985: 327 carries for 5.1 ypc
• 1986: 173 carries for 4.3 ypc
• 1987: 251 carries for 6.4 ypc

So... Per your logic:

205 carries = 4.1 ypc
956 carries = 5.1 ypc

Wait... What?

Or any way in between:

205 carries = 4.1 ypc
532 carries = 4.7 ypc
705 carries = 4.6 ypc
956 carries = 5.1 ypc

I get your point. If you cherry-pick a certain player's highest ypc season, their overall mean will be lower than their highest individual season. But if you assume that the historical accident that Ron Dayne's freshman campaign was his highest ypc season (although not highest overall carries per season nor his highest number of carries per game) it makes it simple to assume that all future seasons would be lower.

But then you look at Thurman Thomas and his highest number of carries per season (327) was also his second-highest ypc average, and that his second-highest number of carries per season was his highest ypc average. If I followed your logic and saw the first three seasons, I'd assume that his sophomore campaign at 5.1 ypc was the outlier, and that his junior campaign was reversion to the mean. If he had left college for the NFL after his junior year, none of us would have known he was due to explode with a 6.4 ypc campaign as a senior.

Yet his senior campaign was SO good that one year brought his overall mean from 4.6 ypc up to 5.1 ypc, equal to his BEST individual season previously.


You don't know which season is the outlier, so you can't assume that future seasons not played are lower ypc than even good previous seasons.

Here, look at it like this, because it applies to Thomas.  Maybe you'll see this as a different point, but it's all related:
with 4 years worth of carries, we get a great idea of the player's personal mean, right?  Dayne's was 5.8, Thomas' was 5.1, and Sanders' was somewhere below 7.6.  We can be much more confident in Dayne's and Thomas' because of the volume of carries.  We cannot be confident in Sanders' because of the relatively few carries.  I THINK we can agree on all that.
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Now with that luxury of having confidence in a player's true mean, we can make predictions season-by-season.  
Thomas started out with 4.1 ypc his FR season, on a good amount of carries (205).  Looking back, that was low for him, so we'd expect that to increase his 2nd year.  Whether it jumps up TOWARDS 5.1 or past it, we can't really say, but we can be confident it would jump up from 4.1, and it did - 5.0.  Even with all the additional carries that year (327), since we know his true mean, we could be confident his ypc would increase from year 1.
So he jumps up to 5.0 ypc, which was predictable.  But what wold we predict now?  It doesn't matter much, as he tore his knee and had under 200 carries.
Skip to his 4th year, where his ypc jump to 6.4.  That makes sense, because he didn't continue on to build on his 327 carries from year 2, it was scaled back to 251 carries.  
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My overall point is that in the case of Thurman Thomas, independent of coming off an injury, if he had carried the ball 300+ times, that 6.4 ypc would have dropped towards his 5.1 career ypc average.  It's plain as day.  
YPC averages tend to vary in a zig-zag, using the career ypc average as the baseline.  YPC tends to zig-zag WITHIN the career arc of a bell curve.  If a player has a high number of carries one season, he'll tend to benefit in a ypc bump the next season with fewer carries.  

but if you want this to be a group project instead of you just waxing poetic, then maybe you should consider some of those other opinions as valid instead of just wrong or useless.

This isn't meant to be a group project at all.  
But it can be fun to chime in.  This is just something I'm doing and sharing.  

I have been watching since 1919 and the best RB I've ever seen by far is Charlie Trippi, hands down, no competition at all.