CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Four => Big Ten => Topic started by: medinabuckeye1 on March 02, 2026, 12:16:21 PM
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All data from College Poll Archive (https://www.collegepollarchive.com/football/index.cfm).
I've broken the 90 years of AP Polls into six 15 year segments and this is the last of these weekly (roughly) posts, one for each segment, here are the prior posts:
- 1936-1950 (https://www.cfb51.com/big-ten/90-years-of-ap-polls-the-first-15-1936-1950/)
- 1951-1965 (https://www.cfb51.com/big-ten/90-years-of-ap-polls-the-second-15-1951-1965/)
- 1966-1980 (https://www.cfb51.com/big-ten/90-years-of-ap-polls-the-third-15-1966-1980/)
- 1981-1995 (https://www.cfb51.com/big-ten/90-years-of-ap-polls-the-fourth-15-1981-1995/)
- 1996-2010 (https://www.cfb51.com/big-ten/90-years-of-ap-polls-the-fifth-15-1996-2010/)
Each post lists the top-25 programs from that 15 years as measured by total appearances, top-10 appearances, and top-5 appearances. For this week I'm displaying the top-25 from 2011-2025 along with the top-25 for the entire 90 years (1936-2025) starting with AP Poll Appearances:
(https://i.imgur.com/dDEqB7X.png)
AP top-10 appearances:
(https://i.imgur.com/JRjdsiv.png)
AP top-5 Appearances:
(https://i.imgur.com/KwX16nW.png)
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The story of 2011-2025 is Alabama. Their dominance is astounding. To put it in some perspective, Ohio State's run from 2011-2025 has been astonishing and in just about any other 15 years, Ohio State's 2011-2025 run would easily be the best in the nation and the Buckeyes are a distant second in all three categories.
Appearances:
- Bama leads by 15 over
- tOSU leads by 13 over
- OU leads by 5 over
- UGA leads by 9 over
- Clemson leads by 6 over
- Oregon leads by 3 over
- ND leads by 8 over
- LSU leads by 5 over
- M leads by 35 over
- aTm
Top-10s:
It is rare for a team to be ranked more than 90% of the time and Bama has been not only ranked but inside the top-10 in more than 90% of the AP Polls of the last 15 years. Ohio State is the only team that has managed to be ranked more often than Bama has been top-10.
- Bama leads by 19 over
- tOSU leads by 39 over
- UGA leads by 28 over
- Clemson leads by 7 over
- Oregon leads by 17 over
- ND leads by 22 over
- LSU leads by 10 over
- PSU leads by 2 over
- FSU/M
Top-5s:
Bama's lead here is even more impressive. They have been in the top-5 in more than three-quarters of the AP Polls of the last 15 years and their lead over #2 Ohio State is bigger than Ohio State's lead over #3 UGA.
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I'm impressed with OSU's finish, considering the way it started, what with the Luke Fickel season and all.
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I'm impressed with OSU's finish, considering the way it started, what with the Luke Fickel season and all.
Even Ohio State has bad years now and then, every school does. Where Ohio State has done better than any other school is at avoiding stringing bad years together to become bad decades. Here are the top-25 programs in all time AP Poll appearances along with their worst ranking for any of the 15 year segments I divided the AP Poll era into:
- Ohio State: 9th from 81-95
- Michigan: 16th from 51-65
- Oklahoma: 13th from 36-50 and again from 96-10
- Alabama: 18th from 96-10
- Notre Dame: 20th from 96-10
- USC: 14th from 11-25
- Texas: 21st from 81-95
- Nebraska: 38th from 51-65
- Penn State: 37th from 36-50
- Georgia: 48th from 51-65
- LSU: 24th from 81-95
- Tennessee: 28th from 11-25
- Florida: 98th from 36-50
- Auburn: 75th from 36-50
- Florida State: ZERO appearances from 36-50 and they were 74th from 51-65
- UCLA: 31st from 11-25
- Miami, FL: 75th from 36-50
- Texas A&M: 32nd from 51-65
- Clemson: 34th from 96-10
- Washington: 34th from 51-65
- Arkansas: 61st from 36-50
- Michigan State: 41st from 36-50
- Wisconsin: 57th from 66-80
- Oregon: 72nd from 66-80
- Iowa: ZERO appearances from 66-80 and they were 61st from 36-50
In the 90 years of the AP Poll Ohio State simply hasn't ever had a prolonged downturn anything like what every other program has endured.
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Luckeyes ;)
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Florida's been complete dogshit in this era and to be ranked 17th in ranked season %.....it really shows the relativity of it all. Some programs would kill for 17th in any of these eras.
The mighty Gators being #1 in the previous era makes it all the more difficult. Having come of age right as Spurrier took over is why my expectations are so high.
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I know how you feel
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Having come of age right as Spurrier took over is why my expectations are so high.
Having come of age right as Spurrier took over is why I loathe the Gators so much.
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Great stuff.
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Florida's been complete dogshit in this era and to be ranked 17th in ranked season %.....it really shows the relativity of it all. Some programs would kill for 17th in any of these eras.
This is an important point that @betarhoalphadelta (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=19) reminds me of from time to time. For Ohio State fans the bad times are 1980-1992. In those 13 seasons Ohio State never lost more than 3 games per year:
Earle Bruce took over in 1979 after Woody got fired for punching Charlie Bauman in the Gator Bowl and Earle's first team started 11-0 and went to the Rose Bowl as #1 where they lost by a single point to USC. Then he went 9-3 six consecutive years only breaking that streak when it was impossible to continue because they played 13 games in 1986 and he went 10-3. Bruce's team careened off the cliff (by tOSU standards) in 1987 and he got himself fired with a 6-4-1 season that was only partially redeemed by his 5th and final win over Michigan (5-4 in 9 years) which came AFTER he had been fired. The bottom really fell out the next year with new HC John Cooper finishing below .500 (the first time for tOSU since 1966). That was followed up by an 8-4 season, a 7-4-1 season, an 8-4 season, and an 8-3-1 season. Cooper's first five seasons all ended with two losses except the first and 5th which ended with a tie and a loss.
By Ohio State's standards the above is just flat awful but from 1980-1992 Ohio State was:
- 9th in AP Appearances with 149 appearances in 210 polls, 71%
- 13th in AP Top-10 Appearances with 58 in 210 polls, 27.6%
- 18th in AP Top-5 Appearances with 17 in 210 polls, 8.1%
- 19th in AP #1 Appearances with 2 in 210 polls, 1%
When you are in the top-20 even in your worst times, those are good problems to have that, as you pointed out: "Some (I'd say most) programs would kill for . . ."
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Having come of age right as Spurrier took over is why my expectations are so high.
I think this is something most of us tend to do. I think we tend to learn how things are when we start following them and then just assume that it always has been and always will be that way.
For me that stuck out with Oklahoma. Oklahoma had some great teams in the mid-80s. They finished in the top-6 four straight years from 1984-1987 and even though I was 9-12 then, I didn't really follow CFB because my football interest was directed at the NFL where my local Browns were REALLY good at that time. Then in the 12 years from 1988-1999 the Sooners only finished ranked four times and those four were mid-teen also-ran finishes. They were completely absent from the AP Poll for the entirety of the 1996-1998 seasons. That (88-99) is when I started following the sport and learned how things were and Oklahoma was a complete afterthought for those years so when the jumped up and won the NC in 2000 I was shocked. Older fans were obviously not surprised to see the Sooners in the NC hunt but for me it just felt weird.
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I think this is something most of us tend to do. I think we tend to learn how things are when we start following them and then just assume that it always has been and always will be that way.
Yeah. I started at Purdue in 1996. About all I knew about college football was that we sucked at it. I was a nerdy engineer and didn't attend a game that fall.
But my sophomore year I had joined the fraternity, and we were buying an allotted block of seats, so I decided to get tickets. And that was the year that Joe Tiller showed up. Year 1 with Billy Dicken at QB we went from 3-8 (1996) to 9-3 (1997) and a bowl win. And then I was treated to three seasons of Drew Brees.
I got spoiled over those seasons, and while I [now] know it's not Purdue's normal, it was the formative portion of my fandom...
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I'm trying to imagine some kind of graphic that wouldn't be too complicated to display some of this stuff. I know one could plot of course AP rankings by year for a team, I was musing about smoothing such a plot. You could then compare and contrast periods more easily?
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I'm trying to imagine some kind of graphic that wouldn't be too complicated to display some of this stuff. I know one could plot of course AP rankings by year for a team, I was musing about smoothing such a plot. You could then compare and contrast periods more easily?
Maybe % ranked over rolling 10 or 15 year periods?
It would be a lot of work to get the data entered but the rolling periods would smooth it and give you a good idea of how successful each program was over a given period.