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I was wondering if everybody had perma-rivals the way the SEC now does, and if the B1G teams have the same number of them, as does the SEC with it's three perma-rivals per team.  

Right, sorry, I don't think I worded that well.  

I didn't mean "If Big Ten teams have perma-rivals, do they have 3 perma-rivals like the SEC does?"  

I meant "If Big Ten teams have perma-rivals, do they all have the same number of perma-rivals as each other Big Ten team, similar to how all SEC teams have exactly 3 perma-rivals?"  As in, do all Big Ten teams have 2, or 3, or 4, etc. perma-rivals?  Or do some Big Ten teams have 3 perma-rivals and some might only have 2?

I was musing about other strong programs "back when" that are still around P4 but much weaker than then.  Georgia Tech is one, I think, they were not often a national "power", but they would get a major bowl fairly often, now ...  clearly some of this is coaching, they had a streak of fairly mediocre coaches after Dodd, and then got a shared NC in 1990 or so, then faded again.  Paul Johnson got them back on the map a little with the quirky offense.  I do like their currrent coach, I think he's solid, but they don't recruit at the elite level broadly speaking.

Why did Bama get to 12 when most others sum to 11 or 10?

I was musing about other strong programs "back when" that are still around P4 but much weaker than then.  Georgia Tech is one, I think, they were not often a national "power", but they would get a major bowl fairly often, now ...  clearly some of this is coaching, they had a streak of fairly mediocre coaches after Dodd, and then got a shared NC in 1990 or so, then faded again.  Paul Johnson got them back on the map a little with the quirky offense.  I do like their currrent coach, I think he's solid, but they don't recruit at the elite level broadly speaking.

UCLA is another one.  

The Bruins are 16th in total AP Poll appearances with 553 appearances out of 1,267 polls.  They've been included in 43.6% of all the AP Polls released.  That sounds pretty good but . . .

In the first 63 years of the AP Poll UCLA appeared in 433 of 822 polls from 1936-1998.  That was more than half at 52.7% and good for 11th in the nation behind only the blue-blood big-helmet and blue-blood adjacent teams of ND, M, tOSU, Bama, UNL, USC, OU, TX, PSU, and TN.  

Since then things have not been good for them.  In the 27 years from 1999-2025 the Bruins were only ranked in 120 out of 445 polls.  That is only 27% which is about half of their pace from 1936-1998 and ranks 37th nationally between GaTech and ASU.  They also haven't been ranked since October of 2023 and only finished in the top-10 once since finishing 8th in 1998 (10th in 2014).  

Since then things have not been good for them.  In the 27 years from 1999-2025 the Bruins were only ranked in 120 out of 445 polls.  That is only 27% which is about half of their pace from 1936-1998 and ranks 37th nationally between GaTech and ASU.  They also haven't been ranked since October of 2023 and only finished in the top-10 once since finishing 8th in 1998 (10th in 2014). 

Yeah, in my mind, UCLA is a "competent program".  But they probably aren't.  In their case it may be apathy.

I think that has impacted Tech also because they have a LOT of Asian students who don't care.

It is also 45 minutes from Westwood to Pasadena on a good day. 

The only benefit of them moving to SoFi is that is' only 25 minutes down the 405.

I'll have more thoughts on this topic tomorrow when I get a chance to type.