1915 Syracuse Football Program

[SWC75]

That’s funny, I actually had a poster from that rose bowl in my room growing up. Wikipedia indicates the rose bowl wasn’t too focused on football prior to this game “The first game, the 1902 Tournament East-West football game, was so lopsided that for the next 13 years, the Tournament of Roses officials ran chariot races, ostrich races, and other various events instead of football.”

I would have loved hearing Keith Jackson announce an Ostrich race.

 

[SWC75]

I like these sites a lot but I think James makes a lot of questionable decisions and judgements here. No reasonable person would rank Notre Dame and their pathetic schedule ahead of Syracuse. He underrates difficulty of schedule greatly and doesn’t even consider who much travel that Syracuse team did, and how difficult it was in those days.

He loves to talk about All Americans and Hall of Fame coaches and players but never bothers to mention that the 1915 SU coach Buck O’Neill is a hall of famer, or that Syracuse had 3 All Americans on that team, halfback Red Wilkerson, guard Harold White and guard Chris Schlachter.

Syracuse gave up a FG to Princeton in an early game on the road. They gave up 2 FGs to Montana in that infamous game played in a blizzard where drunken miners with guns intimidated the refs and made a farce of the game. And they gave up a touchdown to Michigan in a game in Ann Arbor that they completely dominated but had a lot of fumbles.

That is it. One touchdown and 3 FGs, playing one of the toughest schedules in the country. They were a top 5 team. No question.

I go there for the wealth of information and the photographs. Vautraver's judgement are his own. You can take or leave them. It's the best site I've found on historical college football.

 

[SWC75]

Here is a study I did some years ago, (which i need to update), of how SU football teams have been ranked by the selectors I could find on the net. I hadn't discovered Vautravers yet, so his #10 ranking for the 1915 team is not shown.

SU in the Rankings- A History

Orangeeyes posted a history of SU football in the AP/UPI rankings through the years. He posted the final rankings. One response asked for information on times we were ranked during the season. I did a history of the basketball team’s weekly and final rankings last season using the ESPN College Basketball Encyclopedia. I’ll do the same for football using the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia, Billy Libby’s “Champions of College Football”, some listings and scores I got from Richard Poling of Ohio back in the 1970’s, (Poling is listed as a national championship selector in the NCAA Record Book) and internet sources from this listing:

Account Suspended

Many of those sources list only champions and many only have information for recent years. But several of them rank teams from each year, some going all the way back to Princeton and Rutgers, 1869. Some of these services ranks all the teams in major college football. I’ll stick to the top 25. These services usually include the bowls in their rankings, for many years before the writers or coaches did. Most of them don’t list the game scores, just the record and ranking. What I’m going to do is list every time Syracuse appears in their rankings, (I just looked at years when we had winning records), and use the ESPN book to describe SU’s in-season rankings in the writer’s and coach’s polls. Here is a listing of the a services that have a ranking of teams instead of just a national champion listed and the years they covered, by years they start their rankings:

1869- Dokter, Howell, (has a link to scores) and Sorenson (has scores)
1900- Albrecht, Libby (to 1935 and ranked only top 5- we never made his top 5)
1930- Massey (to 1998- he just has a top 10)
1935- Poling (to 1984 but I only have them from 1938-74- has scores)
1936- Riley, (He seeds 8 teams for a prospective playoff), Writers (AP)
1950- Coaches (UPI, USA Today/CMM and now ESPN/CNN)
1952- INS (to 1957)
1960- Mark
1962- Hatch, (Just the national champions prior to 1980)
1968- Rothman (Ranks only the Top 5 and we didn’t even make it in 1987)
1970- Rewards
1981- Ranma
1992- Sabin
1993- Congrove, Marsee, Wilson
1995- Bassett, Dolphin
1996- Novick
1998- BCS, Ashburn, Colley
1999- Anderson-Hester, Claassen,
2000- Annar, Bihl, DiSimone, Heileson,
2001- Taylor
(There were others that began after 2001 but we had no winning records for them to judge)

The Early Days

1900- SU finished 7-2-1 under Coach Edwin R. Sweetland. They were ranked #11 by Howell, #13 by Albrecht, #16 by Sorenson and #20 by Doktor.

1901- Sorenson ranked Sweetland’s team at 7-2 #8. Doktor had us at #14 and 6-1. Albrecht has us at 7-2 as does Howell. The SU Media Guide has us at 7-1. Albrecht ranked us #16, Howell #17. The loss Doktor doesn’t count is likely to a team variously referred to as the “Syracuse Alumni” or the “Syracuse All-Stars”, 0-6, listed in Howell and Sorenson but not the SU Media Guide. There are three wins over teams not considered major college, according to Howell. I don’t know which one Doktor discounts.

1902- Doktor has us at 4-2-1 and #12. Albrecht, Howell and Sorenson agree we were 6-2-1. Sorenson ranks us #16, Albrecht #20 and Howell #25. Our first two games were against Cortland Normal, (probably Cortland State), and “Onondaga Indians”. We also began with Cortland Normal in 1901 so I suspect that Doktor isn’t recognizing those games as legit but the other services are. Ironically, they rated us the highest this year, even with the lesser numerical record.

1906- We return to the rankings with Frank O’Neill’s 6-3 team. Sorensen has us at #12, Albrecht #13, Howell #16 and Doktor had us at #22

1907- Sorenson has O’Neill’s 5-3-1 team at #19

1908- Howard Jones’ only SU team goes 6-3-1 and was ranked #22 by Dokter and #24 by Albrecht.

1911- Sorenson has Deforest Cumming’s 5-3-2 team ranked #24, probably because we beat Jim Thorpe’s Carlisle team, 12-11.

1914- Sorenson gives another 5-3-2 team, coached again by Frank O’Neill that beat both Carlisle and Michigan a #23 ranking.

1915- The SU Media Guide has us at 9-1-2. Howell and Sorenson agree but Dokter listed our record as 8-1-2. The opening game that year is listed in the SU media guide as “All-Syracuse”. Sorenson has them as “East Syracuse AA”. Whatever the team was called, the score was 43-0 in favor of SU. I suspect that’s the game Dokter doesn’t recognize.
Howell has us at #15, Dokter #19 and Sorenson #20, (not much better than those 5-3-2 teams). This team gets talked about a lot in SU histories, (supposedly they were invited to what was really the first modern Rose Bowl but had already had a western trip and didn’t want to pay for another one. But the raters seem to feel our schedule wasn’t as good as other years. Frank O’Neill was again the coach.

1917- Frank O’Neill was back for a third stint with a 8-1-1 record and a #5 ranking by Sorenson #9 by Dokter, by #11 Howell, #15 by Albrecht.

1918- We were 5-1 and Howell had us as high as #6 in the country while Dokter had us at #7 and Sorenson #15.

1919- An 8-3 record featuring a 24-3 win over Pittsburgh that was their first loss to a college team in 34 games over 5 seasons got us a #13 ranking by Howell, #17 from Sorenson and #19 from Dokter .

1920- Chick Meehan’s first team went 6-2-1 and was ranked #12 by Sorenson, by Dokter at #19 and #25 by Howell.

1921- Howell has our record as 7-2 and ranked us #15. Dokter has us at 6-2 and #21. Albrecht gives us the same ranking but a 7-2 record. Sorenson says 7-2 and #22. Dokter probably doesn’t recognize a 13-0 win over McGill University of Montreal.

1922- Chick’s 6-1-2 team was #6 in Sorenson’s ranking. Dokter has us at 5-1-2, (we beat McGill again, 32-0) and #18. We were #23 in Albrecht. and Howell.

1923- A loss to Colgate was the only blemish on an 8-1 record that got us a #1 ranking from Howell, (Our “other” national championship!) #6 by Dokter, #7 in Albrecht and Sorenson.

1924- Meehan’s last SU team went 8-2-1 and was ranked, #18 by Howell, #22 by Sorenson and #24 by Dokter.

1925- Again a loss to Colgate spoiled an undefeated record. Howell rated our 8-1-1.
team, now under C.W.P. Reynolds, #17 as does Sorenson. Albrecht had us at #23.

1926- Sorenson has our 7-2-1 team as #21.

1931- It happened again. Vic Hanson’s team lost only to Colgate in a 7-1-1 season that got us a #17 Albrecht ranking.

1934- Hanson’s team won it’s first 6 games- and then lost it’s last two to Colgate and Columbia and wound up #20 in the Albrecht rankings and #24 in Dokter.

1937- The AP began it’s poll of writers in 1936. We first showed up in it’s weekly poll On October 18, 1937, which was the first poll of that year, (the often suggested procedure of waiting until October was already in place). We were 3-0, having beaten Clarkson, St. Lawrence and Cornell and ranked #17. But the bubble burst with a 0-13 loss at Maryland on 10/23. This was the game where Sidat-Singh was left in the locker room so as not trouble the authorities in Maryland, a story that Marty Glickman told many times. We wound up 5-2-1 in Ossie Solem’s first year but weren’t in anybody’s top 25.

1938- We were again in the first poll of the year, on 10/17, this time at #10, having beaten. Clarkson again, gained a terrible revenge on Maryland, 53-0 and beaten Cornell 19-17 in the greatest game Grantland Rice said he had ever seen. But 12-19 loss at Michigan State knocked us out of the rankings, (it was a top 20 at that time) and we didn’t return for three years.

1941- We showed up at #18 in the 11/3 poll with a 5-1 record having just beaten Wisconsin in the famous “reverse center game” . But again our bubble was immediately burst, this time by Penn State 19-34 on 11/9.

1942- We won our first four games over Clarkson, Boston U, Western Reserve and Holy Cross. It got us a #20 ranking in the 10/19 poll. This time we defended our position by beating Cornell 17-7. We were #15 the next week but lost 0-9 to a service team, North Carolina Pre-Flight. Even though that was not a college team, we were dropped from the rankings of college teams. It began a three game losing string that prevented a return to the rankings, a drought that lasted a decade.

The Schwartzwalder Era

1952- Poling has our first Lambert Trophy winners at #11. (He may not have included the bowl games- I can‘t tell from his listings but it seems obvious). AP’s final poll, (pre-bowl) had us at #14. Sorenson has us at #21. The others couldn’t forgive us for the Alabama game.
The UPI, (Coach’s Poll) had begun in 1950 and they actually had us ranked #20 to open the 1952 season. We immediately lost to another service team, Bolling Field, 12-13 and never returned to the UPI poll the rest of the year. But we did turn up in the AP poll in the 8th week at #13 with a 5-2 record. This was after our resounding 25-7 win over Penn State. We followed that up with a 20-14 win over Colgate which caused us to drop to #15. Another win, 26-13 over Fordham, caused us to drop to #16. It was fortunate we didn’t have any more regular season games or another win might have caused us to drop out altogether. Actually, we moved back up to #14 before the bowls, despite not playing another game. It’s also fortunate that there were no polls after the bowls.

1953- We went 5-3-1 but were kind of snake-bit: we were 19 points from being undefeated which the better-remembered ‘52 team could hardly say. Poling seems to have recognized this and ranked us #24.

1955- Ben Schwartzwalder’s team only went 5-3 but turned up at #14 in Poling’s rankings and #20 in Albrecht .
We showed up in the 8th AP poll at #18 on 10/31 with a 3-2 record , having beaten Boston U., Army and Holy Cross but lost to Pittsburgh and Maryland, (both strong teams at that time). We got nipped 20-21 at Penn State and dropped out . But wins over Colgate and West Virginia got us back I n the AP poll at #20. Our season was over but there was one more poll on 11/28 and we weren’t in that one.

1956- Jim Brown led us to a 7-2 record. AP and UPI both had us at #8 in the final, (pre-bowl) polls. Riley has us as his #8 seed. INS had us at #9, (their ranking was pre-bowl). Albrecht had us at #12. Poling again has us at #14. Dokter had us at #19, Howell at #20, as did Sorenson.
An opening 26-12 win over #6 Maryland jumped us from being unranked to #7 in the AP poll on 9/24/56. The UPI didn’t hold it’s first poll until the next week by which time we’d lost 7-14 to Pittsburgh and dropped to #17 in the AP poll, (UPI was not yet convinced). A bye was treated as a loss and we dropped out the following week. But a win over West Virginia and we sprang back up to #14 in the AP poll and #14 in UPI. A win over Army and we were #14/#12. A win over Boston U. didn’t impress and we were down to #19/#15. But a 13-9 win over Penn State, (who had been #12/11) and we rose to #9/#11. A win over Holy Cross left us there but that 61-7 win over Colgate, with Jim brown scoring 43 points, lifted us into the top 10 in both polls, #8/#10. That ended our regular season but the resonance of that game pushed us further to #8/#9 and finally #8 in both polls. Again, there was no poll after the bowls so that was our final ranking.

1958- SU’s 8-2 record put them at #8 in Poling, #9 in Howell and AP, #10 in UPI, #11 in Albrecht, #15 in Sorenson and #20 in Dokter. Howell had us at #9, Sorenson at #15. I was amazed to find that we didn’t crack either poll until the 8th week when, at 5-1, we were #12 in both polls. A one point loss to Holy Cross held us back but a 38-0 blitzing of Nebraska, (the game in which Chuck Zimmerman is pictured in my “signature” photo, below), and close wins over Penn State and Pitt finally got us there. We were on quite a roll and beat Boston U 42-0, (#12/#11) and Colgate 47-0 (#10/#11), then ended the regular season with a 15-12 win over West Virginia , which put us at #10 in both polls. The final poll pushed us up to #9 in AP. We lost to Oklahoma, (#5 in both polls) in the Orange Bowl but, again there was no poll after the bowls in those days.

1959- We were 11-0 and national champion to AP, UPI, Albrecht, Howell and Poling and Riley‘s #1 seed. Massey had us #2 to Mississippi. Dokter and Sorenson had us #3 behind Ole Miss and LSU.
We were #20 in the AP poll to start on 9/19. We disappeared the next week without playing a game. But #2 Oklahoma got food poisoning and lost to Northwestern, 45-13. #3 Auburn lost to Tennessee 3-0. #4 SMU lost to Georgia Tech 16-12. #12 North Carolina lost to Clemson 18-20. The win over Kansas got us to #20/#14. Then #4 Army lost to Illinois 20-14, #5 Iowa to Northwestern 14-10, #6/#7 Clemson to Georgia Teach 16-6, #8/#10 Notre Dame to Purdue 28-7, #13/#16 Georgia to South Carolina 30-14, #14/#10 Ohio State to USC, 17-0, (the first time Woody Hayes punched an opposing player), and #15 Navy to SMU 20-7. That and the Maryland win pushed us to #12/11. Then #8/#6 Tennessee lost to Georgia tech 14-7, #9 Wisconsin lost to Purdue 21-0 and #11/#13 South Carolina lost to North Carolina 19-6. Our win over Navy got us into the Top ten at #8 in both polls. #4 Georgia Tech lost to Auburn, 7-6 and #6/#5 Purdue lost to Ohio State 15-0. Our win over Holy Cross got us to #6 in both polls, with LSU, Northwe4stern, Texas, Mississippi and USC ranked above us, (this is 10/19). None of them lost and we beat West Virginia to remain at #5. Then came Billy Cannon’s famous Halloween Night punt return vs. Ole Miss to beat them 7-3. Our win over Pitt got us to #4/#3. #1 LSU then lost to Tennessee 14-13 on a late goal-line stand, their first loss after 19 wins in a row, and #2 Northwestern lost to Wisconsin, 24-19 while we won our confrontation with Penn State. That vaulted us to #1 in both polls for the first time ever on 11/9/59. We crushed Colgate , Boston U and UCLA and were already National Champions when we beat Texas in the Cotton Bowl to answer any questions.

1960- SU’s 7-2 team was #15 in Albrecht, #17 in Poling, #19 in AP and #24 in Howell
We opened the 1960 season #1 in the AP poll of 9/12. But lost that spot to Mississippi before we’d played a game. Still the UPI voters put us at #1 in their first poll on 9/26. Neither team lost but we regained the #1 spot in both polls on 10/3. We beat Holy Cross but by only 15-6 and fell to #4 behind Mississippi, Iowa and Ohio State on 10/10. Our 21-15 over Penn State got us back to #3, (Ohio State had lost to Purdue) on 10/17. We were still at #3 in both polls when Mike Ditka and the Pitt Panthers ended our 15 game winning streak on 10/29. That knocked us down to #9 and a 6-9 loss to Army put us at #17 AP and #18 UPI. A 46-6 win over Colgate pushed us back to #14 AP but for some reason we dropped completely out of the UPI poll. After a 21-14 win over Miami we were back to #14 on the UPI poll but fell to #17 in the AP. Our season was over, (the players, disgusted with losing two games, declined a bowl game), but somehow we fell back out of the UPI poll of 11/28 and fell further to #19 in the AP poll. If you can make any sense of these votes, you are a better man- or woman- than I.

1961- Ernie Davis’ 8-3 team was #10 according to Poling, #14 AP, #16 in UPI and Howell #18 in Albrecht, #19 in Mark and #23 in Dokter.

This year the AP and UPI polls only picked a top ten, a condition that continued until 1967. This obviously limited the chances for an SU appearance in their rankings. Nevertheless, we were #10 in the first AP poll of 9/18. A 19-8 win over Terry Baker‘s Oregon State team shot us up to #5. A 29-14 win over West Virginia somehow dropped us to #7. We were #9 in the first UPI poll on 10/2. We got nipped 21-22 by Maryland on a catch by Gary Collins and dropped out of the rankings. . We didn’t claw our way back until 11/13 when we made it to #10 in the AP poll at 6-2. The ESPN book lists us as #13 on UPI so apparently UPI was picking more than a top 10 but the book doesn’t list the full UPI ranking. Then came the famous Notre Dame loss. There was a final poll for both AP and UPI that had a top 20 for each and SU is #14/#16. We beat Miami in the Liberty Bowl, 15-14 in Ernie’s last game but there was no poll after the bowls.

1963- Our 8-2 team was UPI‘s #12 team, #13 in Albrecht, #14 in Howell and Poling, #15 in Mark, #18 in Sorenson and #21 in Dokter.
It took us six weeks to crack the UPI poll at #10 and then we lost to Pittsburgh, 27-35. We never showed up in either poll after that, per the ESPN book. But the NCAA record book has us at #12 in the final UPI top 20.

1964- Floyd Little’s first team was 7-4 , #12 in UPI, #19 in Howell and Poling, #23 in Sorenson, #24 in Mark and #25 in the Dokter Poll.
We were #9 in the pre-season AP poll. There wasn’t a second poll until 9/28 and by then we’d lost to Boston College 14-21 on a tipped pass on the last play and blown away Gayle Sayers and Kansas 38-6 behind Floyd Little’s 5 touchdowns. It wasn’t enough to keep us in the rankings. But we reappeared at #10 in the UPI poll on 11/5 and then blew away UCLA 39-0 in the first game I ever got my Dad to take me to. That pushed us to #7 in both polls. We beat Penn State 21-14 but fell to #8. Then we had one of those west coast losses Doug Marrone talks about, 13-31 to Oregon State’s Rose Bowl team. We then fell out of the rankings until 11/16 when we reappeared at #8/#9 only to lose to West Virginia 27-28, again on the last play, as I recall. We fell out of the rankings but the Sugar Bowl invitation had already been accepted. (Actually, per the NCAA Record Book, we were #12 in UPI but the ESPN book just shows the top 10.)

1965- We went 7-3 and Poling had us at #14. We were #18 in Albrecht and #19 in UPI, Dokter and Howell, #22 in Sorenson and #23 in Mark.
We didn’t make the opening AP poll but slipped in at #9 before we’d played a game. Then we got blitzed 0-24 by Miami and that was that for the season. (except the NCAA Record Book has us as #19 in the Final UPI poll)

1966- Our 8-3 Gator Bowl team was #16 in UPI, #19 in Howell, #23 in Albrecht, #23 in Sorenson, #24 in Mark and #25 in Dokter,
We were #7 in the opening poll and then dropped out after an embarrassing 12-35 national TV loss to Baylor. Despite an 8 game winning streak to close out the season, we never did crack the top 10 and the final poll was limited to that. (The NCAA record Book shows us as #16 in the UPI poll)

1967- Larry Csonka led us to an 8-2 record and #12 in UPI, #18 in Poling, #20 in Howell, and #22 in Mark, #24 in Albrecht,
We never made the top ten in either the AP or UPI polls this season, per the ESPN book. (The NCAA record book shows us at #12 in the final UPI poll.)

1968- We hit #15 in the 10/7 AP poll. A 50-17 win over Pittsburgh pushed us up to #11 and #13 in the UPI poll and after a bye week and Arkansas’s loss to Texas, we found ourselves ranked #10 in both polls as we traveled to Berkeley to play California who was #11/#13, the most important game of the weekend of 10/26 according to those rankings. We committed 11 turnovers and lost 0-43 in a game suspended with 7 minutes to play because the crowd stormed the field after still another interception was returned for a touchdown. Those of us who lived through that era remember that as the psychological end of the glory era of the Schwartzwalder period. We were never had that respect again until we regained it a generation later.

1970- But the polls weren’t quite finished with the Schwartzwalder era. On 11/2/70, in the comeback the team had after the black boycott, we edged into #20 in the AP poll with our fourth straight win, 43-13 over Pittsburgh. Despite a 31-29 win over Army, we dropped from the rankings the next week and did not return.

1971- That comeback and the return of most of the black players created considerable excitement for the 1971 season. We were #13 in the pre-season AP poll but slipped to #15 and #19 in the first UPI poll on 9/15. Then we played a game and tied a mediocre Wisconsin team after apparently scoring the winning TD but having the extra point blocked. It was the first game I attended as an under-graduate at SU, expecting to see many victories, (I wound up seeing 10 of them in four years). No Schwartzwalder team was ever ranked again.

The Carrier Dome Era

1984- The 6-5 team that whipped Nebraska was ranked #22 by Dokter, obviously on that basis. Hatch had us at #24 and Sorenson at #25.

1987- After “Tie-Dye” we were #2 in Ranma behind Miami. Mark has us #3 behind Miami and Florida State. Hatch has us at #3- behind Miami and, (get this), Auburn! AP, UPI, USA Today/CNN, Howell, Reward and Riley had us at #4. We were #5 in Albrecht, Sorenson and Massey. Dokter had us down at #6.
We broke into the polls for the first time in 16 years on 9/21 after wins over Maryland, Rutgers and Miami (Ohio). We were #18 in the UPI poll. Despite a 35-21 comeback win over Virginia Tech, we dropped out of the rankings in the next poll. But after winning at Missouri, we appeared at #17 in the AP poll, #16 in the UPI poll. After a bye we moved up further to #13/#11. Penn State was #10 in both polls. After we blew them out of the Dome, 48-21, we entered the top 10 for the first time since the 1968 trip to Berkeley at #9 in each poll. A 52-6 win over Colgate got us to #8 in both polls . A 24-10 win over Pitt kept us at that level. With a win over Navy and losses by LSU and Auburn, we moved up to #6. A 45-17 win over BC, (that started out 0-17), kept us there. The dramatic 32-31 win over West Virginia coupled with losses by #1 Nebraska to Oklahoma and #5 UCLA to Southern California got us to #4 in both polls, a spot which we retained through the bowl tie with Auburn. Miami (Florida) was #1 and Florida State and Oklahoma, who lost to Miami by a total of 7 points, were rated ahead of us, which seems fair. The NCAA Record book shows USA Today/CNN polls from 1982 and they had SU at #4 as well in 1987.

1988- A strong 10-2 follow-up got us a #10 in what ESPN calls the “RB”, #12 in UPI, USA Today/CNN, Albrecht and Dokter. AP and Howell had us at #13 as did Sorenson and Ranma. Reward had us at #14, Hatch at #15. Mark had us at #16.
We were not in the pre-season top 20 in either poll but slipped into the UPI poll at #19 after a desultory 31-21 win over Temple. A 9-26 loss at Ohio State, (who wound up with a losing record that year), knocked us out of the rankings until 10/10 when we slipped back into the UPI rankings at #20 with a 4-1 record. The 24-10 win at Penn State elevated us to #19 in the AP and #16 in UPI. A 38-14 win over East Carolina got us to #16/#13. We feel to #14 in the UPI poll after a bye then beat Navy 49-21. That gave us a little push to #15/#13. A 45-20 win over BC got us to 8-1 and #14/#13 for the game at West Virginia, which was 10-0 and ranked #4 in each poll. They crushed us 9-31 and we fell to #19 in both polls. We had another bye and rose to #18/#16, then beat Pitt 24-7 to end the regular season. We moved up to #17 in the AP poll. After beating LSU in the Hall of Fame Bowl we wound up at #13/#12. Basically, after the first few weeks, and your team gets established in the poll, you only move up when teams above you lose while you can drop precipitously when you lose. USA Today/ESPN had us at #12. (Note: beginning in 1974 the ESPN book has a final poll listing for something called “RB” but I haven’t found any explanation of what this is. However RB has the 1988 team at #10. Their rankings for other years through 1991 are the same or lower than the AP/UPI rankings.)

1989- We opened at #13 in the AP poll but fell to #14 before we played a game. UPI had us at #15. We smashed Temple 43-3 and moved to #11/#10, then beat army 10-7. We were #10/#13 when we lost a wild one at Pitt 23-30, (both teams scored on their first play from scrimmage). We dropped to #18 in AP and out of UPI. After a bye we were #19/#17 and got wiped out by Florida State, 10-41. After our third straight loss, to Penn State 12-34, we never returned to the rankings this year. (But USA Today/CNN had us at #23 in their final poll.)

1990- With an odd record of 1-1-1 (a loss to USC, a win over Temple and a tie with Michigan State) we somehow slipped into the UPI rankings on 9/17 at #25. Another tie with Pittsburgh and they kicked us out. But our 28-0 blanking of Arizona in the Aloha Bowl got us to #21 in the UPI poll.

1991- Another 10-2 team was #7 in Mark, #8 in Hatch and Reward, #9 in Massey, #11 in AP, UPI, USA Today/CNN, Howell and Sorenson, #12 in Albrecht and Dokter and #14 in Ranma.
We were pre-season #25 in the AP poll, then #24 before we played a game. In Paul Pasqualoni’s debut we beat Vanderbilt 37-10 and moved to #22. A win over Maryland got us to #18. The great 38-21 win over Florida got us back into the top 10, #10 in both polls on 9/23. We handled Tulane 24-0 but stayed at #10 before melting in the heat at Florida State, 14-46 and dropping to #15/#17. The upset loss to East Carolina dropped us all the way to #24/#23 but a win over Pitt pushed us back to #18 in both polls. A win over Rutgers got us to #17 in UPI. We beat temple and moved up to #17 in AP. We stayed at #17 in both polls through a bye. A 38-16 win over BC got us to #16. A win over West Virginia didn’t change anything. The Hall of Fame Bowl win over Ohio State pushed us to #11 in both polls and also the USA today/CNN poll.

1992- Still another 10-2 team was #6 in UPI, #7 in AP, USA Today/CNN, the “RB”, Riley and Sabin. Mark, Ranma and Reward rated SU #8. We were #10 in Albrecht, Howell and Massey but #13 in Dokter and Sorenson.
We were ranked pre-season #10 by AP. Our 42-21 win over ECU got us to #9 in both polls as of 9/7. A 31-21 win in the Dome over Texas moved us up to #8 in AP but we dropped to #10 in UPI for some reason. Then came the dreadful 12-35 Dome loss to the same Ohio State team we’d beaten in HOF bowl the previous January. We collapsed to #17 in both polls, then began to work our way back up. A win over Louisville got us to #15. Rutgers got us to #14, West Virginia #12/#11, Temple and Pittsburgh to #10, Virginia Tech to #10/#9 and Boston College to #8/#7. Then came the famous game vs. #1 Miami that wound up with Gedney on the 3 yard line and SU back to #8/#9. Being idol improved us to #6 in the AP by bowl time and our win over Colorado in the Fiesta Bowl left us at #6/#7 (and #7 in the “RB”). The NCAA Record book has our final ranking as #6 in UPI and #7 in USA Today/ESPN.

1993- We were #6 in the preseason AP poll, right where we’d left off. The USA Today/CNN poll was the coach’s poll by now and they opened us at #7, again the same spot. Another win over ECU pushed us up to #4 in the USA/CNN poll. The upset tie at Texas, (let me say that again: “Syracuse’s upset tie at Texas”), dropped us to #12/#11. A narrow win over Cincinnati dropped us further, (let me say that again: “Syracuse’ narrow win over Cincinnati dropped us further”) to #13 in both polls. Then we lost to BC, 29-33 and fell to #23/#22. After a bye week moved up to #24/#19. Then we beat Pitt 24-21 and were ranked #23/#21 when we took that trip to Miami. The 0-49 disaster followed up by the 0-43 humiliation at home to West Virginia dropped us permanently from the rankings and caused Lee Corso to demand on camera that we not be put back on ESPN. either.

1994- We surfaced into the rankings on 9/25 after a one point loss to Oklahoma in the Dome and three straight wins over Cincinnati, Rutgers and East Carolina at #22 in the USA/CNN poll. We then beat the Hokies in the Dome 28-20 and moved up to #21 in the AP and #19 in the USA/CNN poll. A win over Pitt got us to #18/#15. After a bye we were #16/#14. We won a wild one vs. Temple 49-42 to give us a 6-1 record and a #14/#12 ranking. A bye week and a losses by Michigan and Arizona and we were in the top 10 at #10/#9. But a 6-27 loss to Miami knocked us down to #14/#15 and the 0-31 wipe out at BC left us hanging at #24 in the USA/CNN poll. A win over Maryland got us back to #22/#20 but the season ending 0-13 loss to West Virginia dropped us out of the rankings.

1995- Donovan McNabb’s first team was 9-3 and #13 in Marsee, #14 in Mark, #16 in USA Toady/CNN, #17 in the last UPI poll and Congrove, #18 in Albrecht, Dokter and Howell, #19 in AP, #21 in Sorenson and Sabin, #22 in Bassett, #23 in Hatch, #24 in Dolphin and #25 in Reward.
We were unranked pre-season but broke into the rankings at #22/#20 on 9/4 after the win at North Carolina. Then we dropped back out after the home loss to East Carolina. We reappeared on 10/9 at #24 in USA/CNN and, after a win over Eastern Michigan moved up to #20 but only in that poll. The 22-0 win over West Virginia in the Dome got us ranked in both polls, #21/#17. After a bye we were up to #20/#15. Then we got hammered by the Hokies, 7-31 and fell to #23/#22. A 42-10 win over Pitt made no difference but a 58-29 thumping of BC gave us a slight push to #22/#18. A 24-35 loss at Miami dropped us out of the AP rankings and to #25 in USA/CNN. That became #22 by bowl time and our shockingly easy 41-0 win over Clemson got us back to #19/#16, (but #26 in “RB”) at the end of the season. UPI conducted their last poll, (I don’t know who voted) and had us at #17.

1996- Another 9-3 team was #12 in Bassett, Dokter and Dolphin, #13 in Albrecht, Ranma and Sorenson, #14 in Howell, #15 in Marsee #16 in Congrove and Hatch #17 in Reward and “The RB“, #18 in Novick, Sabin and Wilson #19 in USA/CNN, #21 in AP and #22 in Mark and Dolphin.
The second year of the McNabb era began with SU at #10 in AP and #13 in the USA/CNN poll. By the time of our first game, it was #9/#11. Unfortunately that game was a 10-27 loss in the Dome to UNC which dropped us to #22/#24. After a bye we fumbled away a 33-35 loss at Minnesota and disappeared from the rankings until 11/4 when five straight wins got us back to #24/#23. A win over Tulane and we were #19 in each poll. Previously unbeaten Army went down 42-17 and we were #16/#17. A win over Temple produced no movement. Then came the controversial 31-38 loss to Miami in the Dome, (the refs failed to call interference on a punt return muff). That knocked us down to #22/#22 to end the regular season. Our win over Houston in the Liberty Bowl pushed us back up to #21/#19 and #17 in the “RB”).

1997- Bassett had us at #15, Congrove #19, USA Today/ESPN #20, Ranma had us at #21, the “RB” #22 and Marcy #23.
We started out at #17/#16 but the 34-0 crushing of Wisconsin in the kick-off Classic got us up to #13 in AP, USA Today was now paired with ESPN rather than ESPN. They didn’t have their first weekly poll until a week later, by which time we‘d fumbled away the NC State game, 31-32. Amazingly, that one point loss dropped us completely out of the rankings. Subsequent losses at Oklahoma and Virginia Tech didn’t help and we didn’t get back in the rankings until 10/27, after 4 straight wins which got us a #24 ranking in USA/CNN. A 40-10 romp over West Virginia in the Dome pushed it to #22 AP and #19 USA/CNN. A win over BC got us to #21/#19 and another over Pitt to #18/#17. After a bye we were #16 in both polls. We finally beat Miami 33-13 to clinch the conference title and we were #15 in both polls. Our 18-35 loss to K-State in the Fiesta Bowl left us at #21/#20, (and #22 in “RB”).

1998- Donovan went out with an 8-4 record and an amazing #6 ranking from Bassett. Dokter had us #12, the BCS #15, (before the bowls, of course), Congrove and Wilson #18 and Ashburn #19. Howell, Novick and Sorenson had us at #21, #23 Albrecht USA Today/ESPN, Dolphin and Marsee #24. AP, Mark and Reward rated SU #25.
We started at #17 in AP and lost that 33-34 game to eventual national champion Tennessee in the Dome. (The coach’s poll was now USA Today/ESPN but didn’t begin until 9/6.) That pushed us down to #19/#18 but the great 38-28 win over Michigan in “the Big House” got us a #13 ranking in both polls. Then we swamped Rutgers 70-14 and were #12/#13. After a bye and a loss by Washington we were #11 in both polls when we went down to Raleigh to get revenge from NC State. After that 17-38 stinker we fell to #24 in both polls. A 63-21 romp over Cincinnati only got us to #23/#22 A win over BC and we advanced to #21 in the AP poll. After a bye week and losses by Colorado, Missouri and Georgia tech, we were #17/#19, (sometimes the best thing you can do is not play while others are losing). A win over Pitt and we moved up to #15/#17. But then we lost at West Virginia and fell out of the AP poll and barely held on at #25 in USA/ESPN. Then came the famous 28-26 win over Va Tech in the Dome, which got us to #24 in both polls a win over Temple that got us to #21/#22 and the dream-sequence 66-13 win over Miami that propelled us to #18 in both polls. We were #15 in the BCS rankings. We rose to #17 in USA/ESPN before the bowl but the 10-31 loss to Florida in the Orange Bowl dropped us to #25/#24, (and #35 in “RB”), kind of disappointing for a team that could almost beat this year‘s national champion, blow last year‘s national champion out of their own place and beat Miami by 53 points. It may be as true of other schools but it seems that our losses are regarded as more meaningful to the pollsters than our wins. Climbing the polls is like climbing a mountain for SU.

1999- In the post-McNabb era we entered the rankings in week 6, (9/26) at 3-1 with the only loss a classic to Michigan in the Dome. We were #22 in the AP and #19 in the USA/ESPN. A 30 point win over Tulane got us to #18/#17 and an OT win over Pitt gave us a #16/#15 ranking going to Blacksburg. It was a black day for us when we lost by the greatest margin a ranked team had ever lost by, 0-62. We managed to retain a #24 ranking in USA/ESPN through a bye week. But a one point loss to Boston College took care of that.

2000- Anmar had us #18

2001- The 10-3 Dwight Freeney team was #7 in Bassett, Bihl and Dolphin, #9 in Marsee and Wilson, #11 in Ashburn, Heileson, Howell, Mark and Sorenson, #12 Anderson-Hester, Colley and Hatch #13 in Albrecht, Congrove, Dokter and Sabin, #14 in AP, USA Today/ESPN, DeSimone and Reward, #15 in Taylor and $19 in Ranma and #25 in the “RB”.
One October 28 we appeared in the rankings for the first time in two years, having won 7 in a row after opening losses to Georgia Tech and Tennessee. We were #19/#22 and, after a bye week, we improved to #18 in both polls. A win over West Virginia got us to #14/#13 and we went down to Miami with an 8-2 record. Then we endured the second biggest defeat a ranked team has ever suffered, 0-59. But they were #1 in the country and would win the national title so we managed to retain a #22/#21 ranking. A win over BC got us to #18/#17 to close the regular season. That changed slightly to #18 in both polls for the Insight.com rematch with K-State, which we won 26-3 to finish at 10-3 and ranked #14 in both polls, (and #25 in “RB”).


Summary

Here is a chart of the highest ranking earned form any source of each of the SU teams mentioned above. When a team had, at one point in the season, a higher ranking in the writers’ or coaches’ polls than they had from any source at the end of the season, I noted that in italics, (several teams thus are listed twice, once with their highest end of season ranking, once with their higher in-season ranking). If a source only ranked teams at the end of the regular season and did not include the bowls, I still counted that as an end-of-season ranking.

1) 1923, 1959, 1960
2) 1987
3) none
4) 1993
5) 1917, 1961
6) 1918, 1922, 1992, 1998
7) 1991, 2001, 1956, 1964, 1966
8) 1901, 1956, 1958
9) 1965, 1996
10) 1961, 1988, 1938, 1963, 1968, 1989
11) 1900, 1952
12) 1902, 1906, 1920, 1963, 1964, 1967, 1996
13) 1919, 1995, 1971, 1997
14) 1955, 1965
15) 1915, 1921, 1960, 1997, 1942, 1999
16) 1966
17) 1925, 1931, 1937
18) 1924, 2000, 1941
19) 1907
20) 1934, 1970
21) 1926, 1990
22) 1908, 1984
23) 1914, 1989
24) 1911, 1953
25) none

Syracuse has had 117 football teams, (no team in 1943), and 47 have been ranked in the top 25 by one of the listed services, (40%). 15 of them have been ranked in the top 10, 13%). Seven other teams have been ranked in the wire service polls at some point in the season but were unranked by anyone at the end of the year.

Here are the highest end of season rankings, decade by decade. Again, if there was a higher rank during the season, that’s in italics next to the highest end of season ranking:

1900 #11; 1901 #8; 1902 #12; 1906 #12; 1907 #19; 1908 #22

1911 #24; 1914 #23; 1915 #15; 1917 #5; 1918 #7; 1919 #17

1920 #12; 1921 #15; 1922 #6; 1923 #1; 1924 #18l 1925 #17; 1926 #21

1931 #17; 1934 #20; 1937 #17 1938 #10

1940 #18; 1942 #15

1952 #11; 1953 #24; 1955 #14; 1956 #8; 1958 #8; 1959 #1

1960 #15 #1; 1961 #10 #5; 1963 #12 #10; 1964 #12 #7 1965 #14 #9 1966 #16 #7; 1967 #12 1968 #10
(It's interesting that in the 50's our final ranking was our highest and in the 60's we always had a higher ranking earlier. I take it as a sign of respect earned in the 50's that we didn't quite live up to in the 60's)

1970 #20; 1971 #13

1984 #22; 1987 #2; 1988 #10; 1989 #10

1990 #21; 1991 #7; 1992 #6; 1993 #4; 1994 #9; 1995 #13; 1996 #12 #9 1997 #15 #13 1998 #6 1999 #15

2000 #18 2001 #7

 

[SWC75]

Here's another lengthy post I did on ranking SU's teams a few years ago, (that also needs updating). It's based on my system called "point differential rankings". If you beat a team by more than anyone else did or tie a team that won all its other games or lose to a team by the smallest margin, you get a '1', meaning you did better or as well as anyone else against that team. if one team did better, you get a '2'. If two teams did better, you get a '3', etc. then you average the rankings at the end of the schedule and that shows how consistently strong the team's performances were in that year.

Here then, is the rating of all the Syracuse teams since 1899, when Howell and Sorenson first consider SU to be a major college team, with the exception of 1903-04 when he drops us from that status temporarily. One weakness of the system is in years when less games are played by our opponents, a bad performance will tend to be rated higher than when more games are played. So a team like the 2007 Syracuse team will look worse than the 1936 team or the 1948 team when in fact they may not have been. The system is thus a bit better at rating good teams than bad teams.

1899 8-6-7-3 = 6.00 (I don’t know exactly what Sorenson’s and Howell’s criteria for a major college team is but this is the first year they have SU on their listings and they don’t have us in 1903 or 1904, either- there was no SU team in 1943. The number of games played in these early years was actually comparable to modern teams. Williams and Dickinson, both majors at the time, played 13 games while Cornell and Army played 10 and 9, respectively.)

1900’s

1900 3-11-6-3-4 = 5.40 (We were 7-2-1 overall and 2-2-1 vs. majors but we made the rankings for the first time- see my prior post “SU in the rankings”- They were ranked #11 by Howell, #13 by Albrecht, #16 by Sorenson and #20 by Doktor. There were 42 teams considered major college at this time. The #11 was a 0-43 squashing by the Princeton Tigers, huge power at that time.)
1901 6-4-3-3-2 = 3.60 ( We were 7-2 overall, 4-1 vs. major college teams and ranked as high as #8 by Sorenson.)
1902 2-7-5-7-5 = 4.80 (We started out with 4 small college teams and then played five major college teams. We only went 2-2-1, losing 0-24 to Yale in our first confrontation with that early-day super power. But it was enough to be ranked as high as #12 by Dokter.)
1903- 1904 We didn’t qualify as a major college. (Tell it Manhattan, whom we beat 144-0 on 11/5/04, a game suspended after 32 minutes. Manhattan failed to gain a single yard while SU scored 25 touchdowns.)
1905 4-2-6-7-2-7 = 4.66 (We were 8-3 overall, 3-3 vs. majors but unranked.)
1906 10-5-5-1-4 = 5.00 (We were 6-3 overall but only 2-3 vs. majors and lost 0-51 to national champion Yale. Still we were ranked as high as #12 by Sorenson.)
1907 3-3-3-6-3-6 = 4.00 (We were 6-2-1 overall, 2-2-1 vs. majors but had a scoreless tie with mighty Yale. But only Sorenson rated us- we were #19.)
1908 3-9-3-4-2 = 4.20 (We were 6-3-1 overall but only 1-3-1 vs. majors. However we played quite a major slate- Yale, Carlisle, Princeton, Colgate and the new midwestern power, Michigan. We crushed the Wolverines, 28-4 and played the Tigers to a 0-0 tie. We outscored these teams, 28-27 overall. We were ranked as high as #22 by Dokter but I think this team was probably the best we’d ever had to this point.)
1909 4-5-7-4-4-2 = 4.33 (We were 4-5-1 overall, 1-5-1 vs. majors. Michigan rolled us 0-44 in Ann Arbor.)

Summary:
1900 5.40; 1901 3.60; 1902 4.80; 1905 4.66; 1906 5.00; 1907 4.00; 1908 4.20; 1909 4.33 Average for the decade: 4.50.

1910’s

1910 6-1-6-5-1 = 3.80 (We were 5-4-1 overall but only 1-4 vs. the majors. The one win was 14-0 over Carlisle but this was not a year when Jim Thorpe was playing for them -he did from 1907-08 and 1911-12. The other #1 was a 0-3 loss to Illinois who went 7-0 and beat no less than three teams by that score.)
1911 4-7-2-1 = 3.50 (This time Big Jim was playing for Carlisle who beat 11 other opponents by a combined 287-37 but couldn’t beat Bill Orange: SU 12 Carlisle 11. But it was our only win over major team that year. We were 1-2-1 and 5-3-2 overall. Sorenson had us rated #24.)
1912 9-8-8-1-1-3-6 = 5.14 (We really went big-time this year, playing 7 of 9 games vs. big-time opposition. But we only won two of those games as Thorpe and Carlisle got a 0-33 revenge and Princeton destroyed us 0-62. But we beat Michigan and Lafayette worse than anyone else did. We were 4-5 overall.)
1913 5-6-6-4 = 5.25 (We dialed it back, playing only four big timers in 10 games. But we went 0-4, losing to powers Princeton, Michigan, Colgate and Carlisle by a combined 79 points. But we won the rest of them and were 6-4 overall.)
1914 5-2-3-4-3-5-3 = 3.57 (We were 5-3-2 overall and 2-3-2 vs. the bigs. It was the first of 22 straight winning seasons in all games for SU. The season ended on a sour note with a 0-40 beating by Dartmouth and a 0-20 loss in our first confrontation with Notre Dame. Nonetheless, Sorenson has us as #23. By this time there were 82 major college teams. The teams we faced played an average of 10 games.)
1915 3-3-4-3-1-2 = 2.67 (Our first great team. We were 9-1-2 overall, 4-1-1 vs. big-time teams. We lost only to Princeton, 0-3 and tied Dartmouth and then Montana on a three game western swing in a game that was literally played when they got off the train- and in a blizzard. One of the “small-time” teams they played was Oregon State. This team was invited to the first modern Rose Bowl to play Washington but the school decided they’d already spent the money for one western trip and didn’t want to pay for another. Their highest ranking was #15 by Howell. They probably should have been higher than that. They obliterated an undefeated Colgate team that had outscored five teams 223-0 by the score of SU 38 Colgate 0, a game that was talked about for decades afterwards as one of SU‘s very greatest performances)
1916 4-3-5-4 = 4.00 (A rebuilding year. We played four big time teams and got beat by all of them, including 0-30 to Pittsburgh’s first national championship team. The over-all record was 5-4.)
1917 1-7-1-1-1-2 = 2.16 (This team was even better than the 1915 team. They were ranked as high as #5 by Sorenson and were the best college team four of their six big-time opponents played. They got squashed again by Pitt, in the middle of a 33 game winning streak against collegiate teams, 0-28. They also won the first of a series of games against Midwestern power Nebraska, 10-9. We were 8-1-1 over all, 5-1 vs. big-time teams. One of the “small time“ teams was Michigan State. The #1‘s were Rutgers- who won all their other games with All-American Paul Robeson, Brown, Bucknell and Colgate)
1918 1-1-3-2= 1.75 (An abbreviated schedule- our big time opponents only played an average of 6 games- but another strong team, which lost only to undefeated Michigan. They didn’t have to play Pittsburgh who again won the national championship. We were 5-1 but 3-1 vs. big-time college teams.)
1919 2-1-3-3-3-3-1-5-6 = 3.00 (Another strong team that won one of the greatest victories in SU history, a 24-3 win over Pitt in Archbold that finally ended their 33 game winning streak. A Midwestern swing to end the season brought the Orange down a notch or two with losses to Indiana and Nebraska. We were 8-3 and 6-3 vs. a record 9 big-time teams)

Summary:
1910 3.80; 1911 3.50; 1912 5.14; 1913 5.25; 1914 3.57; 1915 2.67; 1916 4.00; 1917 2.16; 1918 1.75; 1919 3.00 Average for the decade: 3.48

1920’s

1920 1-1-1-3-3 = 1.80 (Chick Meehan got his coaching career off to a great start with this group who went 6-2-1- overall and 3-1-1 vs. the bigs. The first three games were all #1 performances, including a tie with unbeaten Pitt. They were ranked as high as #12 by Sorenson.)
1921- 1-2-9-2-3-2 = 3.16 (The low point was a 0-35 woodshed beating at Pitt. The highpoint was a 7-14 loss in Archbold to a 10-0 Washington and Jefferson team who beat everybody else worse and then went out to tie mighty California and it’s All-American, Brick Muller, in the Rose Bowl. Cal had a 49 game unbeaten string from 1920-25 and only they did better against W&J that year than the Orange did. We were 7-2 overall and 4-2 vs. the bigs and #15 in Howell‘s rankings.)
1922- 3-4-5-1-3 = 3.20 (The only team to beat the For Horseman of Notre Dame in the three years they were together as a unit was Nebraska and they did it twice. Nebraska lost three times in those years- once to Red Grange and Illinois and twice to Syracuse. This year’s Big Red were 7-0 and outscored their opponents 270-19 in their other games but we beat them 9-6 in Archbold. Roy Simmons said the team was told that Nebraska was sightseeing- they would be going to Niagara Falls over the game. That riled up the Orange. We were 6-1-2 overall and 2-1-2 vs. the bigs. Sorenson rated us #6, probably on the strength of the Nebraska game. Yes, there was more than one “Nebraska game”.)
1923- 1-1-4-2-2-4-2 = 2.29 (How would you like to beat Alabama and Nebraska in the same year? The Tide was just about to emerge as a national power when they came to Archbold and got beat 23-0, an afternoon in which Coach Wallace Wade said he learned more football than in all the rest of his career combined. At the end of the season SU traveled to Lincoln and repeated their win of the previous year, 7-0. Overall, we were 8-1 and 6-1 vs. the bigs. The one was an agonizing upset, 7-16, vs. arch-rival Colgate, a harbinger of things to come. Despite that, Howell rated SU his #1 team for 1923, our “other” national champion. Six of the seven big time teams we played had winning records. This team was also invited to the Rose Bowl but the administration again turned the offer down, to much controversy.)
1924 1-1-2-4-4-2-8 = 3.14 (Chick’s last SU team went 8-2-1 overall and 5-1-1 vs. the bigs. They somehow lost 0-3 to West Virginia Weslayan but were 8-1-1 when they got a trip to the west coast to play Southern California, perhaps to make up for the declined Rose Bowl invitation. They had a great time of it. “The Syracuse Football Story” by Ken Rapport shows the team posing on a movie set with the director and star, (unidentified). They did not have as good a time losing to the Trojans 0-16. Still they were ranked as high as #18 by Howell. One of the “small-time“ teams we played was Boston College.)
1925 1-2-4-5-1 = 2.40 (Colgate was unbeaten, including a 6-19 triumph over the Orange that began the “Hoodoo”. We were also unbeaten going into that game. We wound up 8-1-1 overall and 4-1 vs. the big-time schools. Somehow we were tied 3-3 by Ohio Weslayan- we should avoid the Weslayans. Howell and Sorenson had us at #17.)
1926 3-3-3-2= 2.75 (Against a watered-down schedule with only four big-time teams we went 7-2-1 but only 1-2-1 vs. the bigs. Sorenson did rate us #23.)
1927 1-4-4-3-5 = 3.40 (There was some slippage in the program as indicated by an overall record of 5-3-2, with another tie with Ohio Weslayan and a record vs. the bigs of 1-3-1. The highlight was a 19-6 win over Georgetown, then a major college team who beat their eight other opponents by a combined 377-2! But nobody ranked us for the first time in a decade.)
1928 3-6-4-8-3 = 4.80 (The slippage continued punctuated by a 6-30 loss to Colgate, which was becoming a power under Andy Kerr. We actually lost to Ohio Weslayan, 0-6. We were 4-4-1 overall but only 1-3-1 vs. big time teams.)
1929 7-5-4-3-5 = 4.80 (We were 6-3 overall but only 2-3 vs. the top level teams and unranked. Colgate rolled 0-21.)

Summary:
1920 1.80; 1921 3.16; 1922 3.20; 1923 2.29; 1924 3.14; 1925 2.40; 1926 2.75; 1927 3.40; 1928 4.80; 1929 4.80 Average for the decade: 3.17

1930’s

1930 6-4-5-3-3 = 4.20 (We were 5-2-2 overall but only 1-2-2 vs. big time teams, including another whipping at the hands of the Red Raiders, 7-36. )
1931 4-6-3-3-2 = 3.60 (We stormed into the Colgate game at 7-0 and limped back out, having lost 7-21 and then got held to a 0-0 tie with Columbia to end the season. Nonetheless we were back in the rankings, at least according to Albrecht who ranked us #17.)
1932 11-3-4-2-2 = 4.40 (We were starting to play more intersectional opponents- Florida the previous year and SMU this year. The Mustangs would be real good in a couple of years but they were only a 3-7-2 this year. We still managed to lost to them, 6-16 and only one team did worse, our first “double figure” game since the 1906 Yale debacle. We were also one of the nine teams who failed to score, 0-16, vs. Colgate in their “undefeated, untied, unscored upon and uninvited” year- people thought they should be in the Rose Bowl. We also managed to lose to Ohio Weslayan again, 12-19. We wound up 4-4-1 but only 1-3-1 vs. big time schools)
1933 2-8-2-6-4-6 = 4.67 (We were 4-4 overall but only 2-4 vs. the “bigs”. The fact that we played only two small-time teams is a change. Colgate got us again, 3-13.)
1934 3-3-1-1-3-3 = 2.33 (Our best team of the 1930’s. We won out first 6, including 10-0 over a Michigan State team that was 8-0 vs. everyone else. But then we came a cropper vs. Colgate, 2-13 and Columbia 0-12, both of whom finished 7-1. Albrecht had the highest ranking at #20 but this team was clearly better than the 1931 team, at least by this measure. We were 6-2 and 4-2 vs. the bigs.)
1935 4-6-3-4-4-3 = 4.00 (For the second year in a row we were 6-0 going into the Colgate game. For the 11th year in a row we couldn’t come up with a win, this time getting blown out 0-27. And all these games were played in Archbold Stadium because it was so much bigger than Colgate‘s field. We wound up 6-1-1 and 4-1-1 vs. the bigs. But nobody ranked us and the point differential rankings suggest why: this team wasn’t as strong as the 1935 team, despite the similar record.)
1936 6-8-7-4-7-6 = 6.33 (This year all the air came out of the balloon and we had our worst season since going 0-8-1 in 1892. The record was 0-6 vs. big time teams and 1-1 vs. the smalls, including Baldwin-Wallace who beat us 0-19- yes it was that bad. One thing I will say for this team was that they weren’t the worst team any of their opponents played- 6th of 8 vs. Cornell, 8th of 11 vs. Maryland, 7th of 8 vs. Penn State, 4th of 8 vs. Indiana, 7th of 8 vs. Columbia and 6th of 9 vs. Colgate. We were also 3 of 8 vs. Baldwin-Wallace and beat Clarkson 31-0. But we stunk, no doubt about it, and it cost Vic Hanson his job. )
1937 2-9-3-6-6 = 5.20 (Ossie Solem produced an improvement to 5-2-1 and 2-2-1 vs. big-time teams. But this was the season of the Wilmuth Sidat-Singh incident at Maryland where he was left in the locker room in deference to the authorities. That’s the “9“ but the point differential ranking indicates that this was just not a very good team. Colgate again beat us 0-7, the least year of the “Hoodoo”, during which we were 0-11-2 and got outscored 50-239 by our arch-rival in our own stadium.)
1938 1-1-5-6-3-9-5 = 4.29 (Not a great team but a memorable season for a number of reasons. The first #1 is a 53-0 win over Maryland in Archbold where Sidat-Singh and his teammates got a devastating revenge against the Terrapins for the situation they’d been put in the year before. Then came what Grantland Rice said was the greatest game he’d ever seen: the 19-17 win over a great Cornell team that wouldn’t lose against or two years in the famous “fifth down” game vs. Dartmouth. Later we finally ended the Hoodoo by beating Colgate 7-0. We also faced another undefeated, untied and unscored upon team, Duke - who did get invited to the Rose Bowl and lost in the final seconds to USC. But that team handled us 0-21 and Penn State beat us 6-33. Overall we were 5-3 an 4-3 vs. Big-time teams. It was a year of ups and downs but the ups sure were great.)
1939 4-1-7-2-7-3-7 = 4.43 (Not as memorable a season but the team wasn’t that much worse. The schedule may have been the toughest we had played to this point. The first four big time opponents, Cornell, Georgetown, Duke and Penn State were a combined 28-2-2. We managed to tie the Hoyas 13-13, who won all their other games.)

Summary:
1930 4.20; 1931 3.60; 1932 4.40; 1933 4.67; 1934 2.33; 1935 4.00; 1936 6.33; 1937 5.20; 1938 4.29; 1939 4.43 Average for the decade: 4.35

1940’s

1940 8-1-5-2-6-2-4 = 4.00 (The days of half the schedule being small-time teams were about gone: only one this year. We were 2-4-1 vs. the bigs. The highlight was tying a 6-1-1 Penn State team, 13-13.
1941 4-3-4-5-6-3 = 4.17 (The year of the famous reverse center play, which we used to upset Wisconsin 27-20. We had a good 5-2-1 record. Two of the wins were against small time teams, one of whom was Rutgers. Despite the record, it wasn’t that strong a team.)
1942 2-4-4-7 = 4.25 (In the last pre-war year we did have four “small time” opponents but two were Rutgers and Boston University, who wouldn’t stay that way. They also played a service team. We were 6-3 over all and 2-2 against big time college teams.
1943 Football was suspended for the war.
1944 9-8-5-5-8-1 = 6.00 (A disappointing return but at least we had fun beating Colgate 43-13. We were 2-4-1 with one win coming against a small-time team. )
1945 7-2-9-5-8-5-6 = 6.00 (We finally had an all-big time schedule. The problem is we didn’t have a big-time team to play it. In Ossie Solem’s final year we were 1-6. The bottom was a 0-8 loss to a 1-6-1 Dartmouth team.)
1946 8-5-1-8-3-2-6-8 = 5.13 (Solem’s assistant, Biggie Munn took over and produced a 4-5 record. Boston U. was still considered small-time so we were 3-5 vs. big time schools. The season ended with dismal 7-25 and 22-59 losses to Colgate and Columbia and Munn and his entire staff moved on to Michigan State.)
1947 9-3-7-9-6-4-8 = 6.57 (Reeves Baysinger, who had played for SU in the 20’s and been a jack of all trades since then for the University, filled the vacant spot for two difficult seasons. This year we went 3-6 but were only 1-6 vs. big time teams. But we did beat Colgate 7-0! The third game was a 0-40 disaster against the best team Penn State had prior to the Paterno era, a team that ran through the regular season 9-0, outscoring them 319-27. They set an NCAA record that still stands by “allowing” us a total offense of minus 47 yards in that game. They tied Doak Walker’s SMU team, 13-13 in the Cotton Bowl.)
1948 10-6-7-10-4-8-8-6 = 7.38 (The most famously bad SU team prior to the G-Rob era. We beat Niagara 13-9 in the opener and then lost to 8 straight big-time teams by a combined 76-235. Niagara gave up football after this season. The joke was if they couldn’t beat Syracuse they might as well quit the sport. The worst loss was a 0-48 loss to Northwestern’s Rose Bowl team. Unlike in 1936, we were the worst team Holy Cross and Northwestern played. We were 8th of 9 vs. Temple and Colgate, 7th of 9 vs. Cornell, 6th of 9 vs. Penn State and Columbia and 4th of 8 vs. Boston U, which was now considered a major college. Baysinger was let go after the season. The best we could get to replace him was some guy from Muhlenberg.)
1949 3-7-2-5-5-6-2-1 = 3.88 (Ben’s first team improved from 1-9 to 4-5. The 3.50 improvement in point differential ranking is easily the best in the school’s history: the second best was 2.00 when we got Donovan McNabb as our quarterback. Lafayette was considered small time. The #1 performance was vs. Colgate, #7 vs. Temple)

Summary:
1940 4.00; 1941 4.17; 1942 4.25; 1944 6.00; 1945 6.00; 1946 5.13; 1947 6.57; 1948 7.38; 1949 3.88 Average for the decade: 5.26

1950’s

1950 1-6-6-2-1-3-5-5 = 3.63 (The #1s were vs. Rutgers and Holy Cross, the #6‘s Temple and Cornell. We were 1-1 vs. small time teams, Lafayette and John Carroll and 4-4 vs. everyone else.)
1951 4-4-7-8-2-9-4-2 = 5.00 (The #2 was Boston U, the #9 Penn State. Lafayette was still not big-time. We lost 20-41 to undefeated Illinois’ Rose Bowl champions.)
1952 4-3-4-7-2-2-1-1-12 = 4.00 (The #1s were vs. Colgate and Fordham, the #12, of course, Alabama. We played no small-time teams but did lose to a service team, Bolling Field. We also got crushed 7-48 by Michigan State‘s national champions. Still we were ranked as high as #11 by Poling.)
1953 4-2-6-3-1-1-2-7 = 3.25 (The #1s were vs. Holy Cross and Cornell, #7 Villanova. Temple was not considered big-time any more. We were 4-3-1 vs. everyone else but the losses were by 6,7 and 1 point We were 18 points from being 9-0. Poling ranked us #24.)
1954 5-4-5-9-5-5-1-6 = 5.00 (The #1 was vs. Colgate, #9 Illinois- they were 1-8 but beat us 6-34. At least everybody was big-time this year, as would be the case for the next 28 seasons.)
1955 5-4-2-9-1-5-2-2 = 3.75 (The #1 was vs. Holy Cross, #9 Maryland, who went 10-0 until Oklahoma beat them in a bowl game. Every team we played had a winning record except Boston U. We were ranked as high as #14 by Poling.)
1956 3-6-3-3-2-2-2-1-4 = 2.89 (The #1 was vs. Colgate, the 61-7 game where Jim brown scored 43 points. #6 was the lone regular season loss to Pittsburgh. Our highest ranking was #8 by both AP and UPI as well as Riley.)
1957 6-3-1-6-6-5-5-4-5 = 4.55 (The #1 was vs. Cornell. The #6s were Iowa State- our last tie for 14 years, Nebraska- a 26-9 win over a 1-9 team- and Penn State. We were 20 points from being 9-0)
1958 2-4-1-1-2-4-1-2-4-4 = 2.50 (The #1s were Cornell, Nebraska and Boston U. There were no really bad performances. We lost one regular season game by one point- 13-14 to Holy Cross, a good program in those days under Dr. Eddie Anderson. So did Oklahoma, who beat us 6-21 in the Orange Bowl. Our highest ranking was #8 by poling.)
1959 1-1-1-2-1-1-2-1-1-1-1 = 1.18 (The #1s were Kansas, Maryland, Navy, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Colgate, Boston U., UCLA and Texas. If you don‘t know all about this season, you should. We led the country in scoring, yards gained, rushing yards gained, touchdown passes, first downs, fewest yards surrendered and fewest rushing guards given up, the later 19.3 per game, second all time to the 1947 Penn State team. We outgained our opposition by a ratio of 451-96 yards per game, a record that will never be broken. We were #1 in virtually all the polls, including the ones that really counted- AP and UPI.)

Summary:
1950 3.63; 1951 5.00; 1952 4.00; 1953 3.25; 1954 5.00; 1955 3.75; 1956 2.89; 1957 4.55; 1958 2.50; 1959 1.18 Average for the decade: 3.58

1960’s

1960 2-2-2-2-1-9-5-1-4 = 3.11 (The #1’s were West Virginia and Colgate, the #9 Pittsburgh, who ended our 16 game winning streak, 0-10, the team‘s worst performance, by this measure, in 5 years. Still we were ranked as high as #15 by Albrecht.)
1961 2-1-4-1-5-1-2-1-6-4-4 = 2.82 (The #1’s were West Virginia, Nebraska, Holy Cross and Colgate, the last game against them for 21 years. In the Schwartzwalder Era, we played Colgate 13 times, won 12 and laid the worst whipping of the year on them 6 times. The #6 game was Notre Dame. This team was a bit snake-bit, losing by a point to Maryland an on that field goal after time had expired vs. Notre Dame. It could have been a 10-1 team. Poling had us as high as #10.)
1962 4-6-2-3-3-10-2-1-6-5 = 4.20 (The #1 was George Washington The #10 stinker was again vs. Pitt)
1963 2-6-1-3-1-2-5-6-1-4 = 3.10 (The #1’s were Holy Cross, Penn State and Richmond. The #6’s were Kansas and West Virginia. UPI had us at #12.)
1964 7-1-2-1-3-11-2-3-3-5-5 = 3.91 (One of our most inconsistent teams. The #1’s were 38-6 over Gayle Sayers and Kansas thanks to Floyd Little’s 5TDs and 39-0 over an undefeated UCLA team- the first gamer my father ever took me to. The #10 was to Oregon State’s Rose Bowl team, 13-31 on the west coast. That doesn’t sound too bad but the #10 ranking indicates that, like that 1991 FSU game, the fact that an opponent is good doesn’t mean that a decisive loss to them should be excused. We were again #12 in UPI.)
1965 3-9-2-8-2-2-2-6-3-4 = 3.90 (The first time since 1951 that we weren’t the best team somebody played by this measure. The #9 game was 0-24 home loss to a 5-4-1 Miami team. The #8 game was another west coast loss to a Rose Bowl team, UCLA, whom we had handled so well in previous years. Poling had us at #14.)
1966 10-7-3-3-1-1-3-5-1-2-4 = 3.64 (This year’s stinker was an opening national TV 12-35 loss at Baylor, a team that would win up 5-5. Then we got killed by UCLA at home and went on the longest winning streak since the national title year, 8 in a row, with #1’s over Boston College, Holy Cross and Florida State. UPI had us at #16.)
1967 5-1-9-10-5-6-8-1-3-1 = 4.90 (Often thought of as Ben Schwartzwalder’s last really good team, this was actually his worst team in 16 years- by this measure, anyway. It consisted of Larry Csonka and a good defense. Larry got a record 43 carries vs. Maryland for 181 yards. We beat an 0-9 team by 7-3. Everybody else beat them by more. The loss the next week at Navy was also the worst performance against them. And yet we had three #1 performances: West Virginia, Holy Cross and UCLA, the last by 32-14 the week after their famous game with USC and OJ Simpson and our last west coast victory to date. UPI had us at #12.)
1968 6-4-5-5-10-1-2-1-6-7 = 4.70 (We now began our serious slide into mediocrity. We were ranked #10 going out to California but by the end of the season, none of our performances prior to that looked very impressive. We did have a couple #1’s after that trip, vs. Holy Cross and Navy.)
1969 7-10-2-7-1-7-1-7-3-9 = 5.40 (This team was, like the 1967 team, a fine defensive team but it had no Csonka, which was too bad because it lost two games by a point and one by 3 points in a 5-5 season. But it wasn’t really that good a team. The #10 game was a 0-13 loss to Kansas, which like Illinois in 1954, lost all of it’s other games. The #9 game to BC was also the worst performance against them all year. The #1’s were our 14-15 loss to Penn State -see U-Tube- where we fumbled away a 14-0 lead and Arizona.)

Summary:
1960 3.11; 1961 2.82; 1962 4.20; 1963 3.10; 1964 3.91; 1965 3.90; 1966 3.64; 1967 4.90; 1968 4.70; 1969 5.40 Average for decade: 3.97

1970’s

1970 8-9-10-4-2-6-2-8-6-1 = 5.60 (This was the year of the black boycott which produced a horrific start, then a sharp comeback with a 5 game winning streak, including the 24-7 win at Penn State, our last over them for 17 years. The Miami game at the end was almost identical to the 1998 game: we led 42-7 at halftime and won 56-16.)
1971 7-6-6-5-6-1-11-3-10-4-5 = 5.82 (This team started out being ranked #13 in the pre-season AP Poll. It wound up our worse team since 1948. The #1 was Holy Cross. #11 was Pitt and #10 was Navy)
1972 3-9-10-5-9-4-7-10-11-3-10 = 7.36 (The collapse everybody thinks occurred the next year really began this year. The “double figure” games were Wisconsin, Pittsburgh, Boston College and West Virginia. We managed to win several close games over bad teams and finish 5-6 but this was a bad team.)
1973 10-9-10-12-8-10-10-4-4-2-9 = 8.00 (The bottom of the barrel. The Schwartzwalder Era is a bell curve, starting from the terrible 1948 the year before Ben came and ending with this mess. The “double figure” games were Bowling Green, Washington, Maryland, Penn State and Miami.)
1974 4-5-8-7-8-4-7-7-11-9-8= 7.09 (Frank Maloney’s first team had the same record as Ben Schwartzwalder’s last team but was a noticeably better team until they ran of gas at the end of the year. The #11 game was West Virginia.)
1975 5-7-3-8-5-8-4-9-4-3-4 = 5.45 (Frank’s second team was much improved, won it’s first three games and was being considered for a bowl until our loss to Rutgers. The Pitt game, 0-38, complete with a Connecticut-like long bomb for a score at the end, was the #9 game.)
1976 9-11-6-5-8-11-4-2-9-7-9 = 7.36 (Frank’s third team sharply backslid. After the Iowa game- the first #11- Frank said that we were the worst team in the country. The other #11 was Penn State. The #2 was the famous Pittsburgh game, when the refs moved the ball back two plays in a row to deprive us of a key first down vs. the national champs. We played two 11-0 teams that year- Maryland and Pitt. The Terps lost in the Cotton Bowl to Houston. The Panthers beat Georgia in the Sugar for the national title.)
1977- 11-12-3-8-9-4-4-9-4-3-3 = 6.36 (A mild comeback after a horrendous start. We were the worst team- by this measure- both Oregon State and North Carolina State, our first two opponents, played.)
1978- 10-6-6-11-5-7-10-5-3-4-10 = 7.00 (Bill Hurley got racked up by Florida State in the first game and any hope of a good season disappeared with him. Illinois went 1-8-2 that year: we were the “1“.)
1979- 7-5-4-3-6-10-11-4-4-2-9-1 = 6.00 (Frank Maloney’s best team laid two huge eggs in mid-season vs. Temple and Penn State and another in the rain at Schoellkopf Field vs. a bad BC team. McNeese St. was 11-0 and a D1A team- they dropped down to 1AA shortly afterward- when we blitzed them in the bowl game.)

Summary:
1970 5.60; 1971 5.82; 1972 7.36; 1973 8.00; 1974 7.09; 1975 5.45; 1976 7.36; 1977 6.36; 1978 7.00; 1979 6.00 Average per decade: 6.60

1980’s

1980: 5-2-6-10-3-10-2-11-4-7-3 = 5.73 (This 5-6 team actually performed slightly better than the previous year’s 7-5 team- by this measure- even if Joe Morris missed several games with an injury. The first “10” was Kansas, the first game he missed. The others were Penn State and Pittsburgh, which had one of the best teams I‘ve ever seen that year. Still, every opponent but one did better than to lose to them 6-43.)
1981: 7-7-6-7-7-7-4-1-8-5-3 = 5.64 (Coach Mac’s first year was considered a disappointment. He took over a veteran team with a healthy Joe Morris and went 4-6-1, a worse record than Maloney’s last. But his team actually performed at a slightly higher level- by this measure. It was also an amazingly consistent team, if not a consistently good team, being the 7th best team 5 of our first 6 opponents played- and we were #6 to the other team. The #1 was Colgate.)
1982- 4-8-11-9-10-10-6-6-6-9 = 7.90 (Coach Mac found the cupboard bare in his second year and had to play young players with dire results. The Colgate game is not included as they were not a Division 1A team- they had been when we played them the previous year.)
1983- 10-4-5-7-12-10-10-6-7-1-3 = 6.82 (We were growing up. The 1980 Pitt may have been the best college defensive team I’ve ever seen. This year’s Nebraska team might have been the best offensive team. But our 7-63 margin of defeat was topped by one team: Minnesota, an 84-13 victim. )
1984- 1-9-9-2-7-7-10-2-5-1-4 = 5.18 (A very inconsistent team. The Nebraska game fell short of being a #1 game by the virtue of that unnecessary safety we took at the end of the game: Oklahoma beat the Huskers 17-7. This was our first ranked team in 17 years, #22 by Dokter.)
1985- 11-1-6-1-5-1-3-3-3-4-6-7 = 4.25 (Our best team since 1966. And after the dreadful opener, were 3.64 for the rest of the season. The same as ‘66. Getting to the Cherry Bowl turned our recruiting around and set us up for what happened two years later. But no one ranked us.)
1986- 9-7-10-8-2-12-5-4-7-10-5 = 7.18 (The ball rolled back down the hill- temporarily. The #12 game was Penn State. Our average rating vs. them during their 16 game winning streak over us was 8.63- we were on average, the 8th or 9th best team they played. They were certainly better than us but the other teams they played were a lot better against them than we were.)
1987- 4-2-3-3-3-1-1-3-1-6-2 = 2.64 (Again, Colgate was 1AA so they weren’t included. If they were, they‘d have joined Penn State, Colgate, Pittsburgh and Boston College, giving up four #1 punch-outs in five games. Ranma had us as high as #2. )
1988- 6-10-1-3-1-3-1-2-3-7-2-2 = 3.42 (A strong follow-up to our “dream year” and an indication that we were in for a good, long run. Except for the lousy performance at Ohio State, this team was very similar to the previous year’s team, both incredibly consistent. Of 24 games in 1987-88 we were one of the top three teams each opponent faced- by this measure- 19 times. ESPN ranked us #10.)
1989- 2-4-7-9-11-1-5-4-3-7-1-6 = 5.00 (A step backwards. Florida State and Penn State were certainly very good teams but we weren’t very good against them.)

Summary:
1980 5.73; 1981 5.63; 1982 7.90; 1983 6.82; 1984 5.18; 1985 4.25; 1986 7.18; 1987; 2.64; 1988; 3.42; 1989 5.00 Average for decade: 5.38

1990’s

1990 12-4-4-8-3-6-1-3-2-8-1-5-2 = 4.54 (We opened in the Kick-off classic losing to USC 16-34. Well, it was USC. But it was a lousy performance and we should have beaten that team and added them to our list of famous scalps: Nebraska, Penn State, LSU, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Miami, etc.; we lifted in this era. It was a much worse performance than our 7-33 loss to Miami at the end of the season. UPI had us #21.)
1991 3-5-1-5-12-3-4-4-4-1-4-2 = 4.00 (See above. The “12” is, of course, that baffling Florida State game that started me down this road. We were #7 in Mark.)
1992 3-3-10-4-1-4-5-3-2-2-5-2 = 3.66 (Our most consistently good team since 1987-88, spoiled only by the Ohio State game in the Dome, another game where we kept running the near-side option over and over again even though it wasn’t working. Without that, we were 2.83. UPI had us at #6.)
1993 2-6-6-3-5-8-12-12-4-8-4 = 6.36 (This team had high expectations but totally fell apart in mid-season. The Miami and West Virginia games were consecutive “worst” performances- 12th of 12.)
1994 7-5-5-4-4-2-9-6-12-6-10 = 6.36 (This team didn’t have the horrendous losses of the previous year, although the Mike Mamula game at BC was another 12, but it also didn’t have much in the way of strong performances.)
1995 3-4-5-5-5-2-2-9-2-3-7-1 = 4.00 (This was a very consistent team until the trip to Blacksburg. I remember we gave the ball to Rob Konrad several times and he punched a hole in the Hokie’s 8 man line repeatedly until we scored on the opening drive. A second Csonka had arrived!. He never got the ball the rest of the game. We went into “near-side option” mode and gave up 31 unanswered points. The Gator Bowl blow-out of Clemson was the first #1 performance by the Orange since Rutgers back in 1992.Marsee had us at #13.)
1996 5-8-1-2-3-2-1-1-1-4-5-3 = 3.00 (The best Pasqualoni team and the best Syracuse team in the years since the 1987 “dream” year. After fumbling away the Minnesota game, the went on tremendous tear, going 1.57 over their next seven games. The four #1 performances- VPI, West Virginia, Tulane, Army, who was 9-0 at the time- were the most since the 1959 team. I recall Coach P crediting the success to his being converted by his assistants to the concept of an “attack” defense, rather than “read and cover“, something Scott Shafer is trying to create now. We were #12 in Bassett, Dokter and Dolphin)
1997 1-6-9-9-4-1-2-1-1-5-3-2-4 = 3.69 (Similar to the previous year’s team, after a 1-3 start we strung together 8 wins in a row. This one wasn’t quite as good, although it got four more #1’s - Wisconsin, East Carolina, Temple, West Virginia. Oklahoma was another big-time scalp we should have gotten, either in 1994 or this year. Bassett had us at #17.)
1998 1-2-1-12-1-4-5-5-3-2-1-7 = 3.67 (The last McNabb team got off to a great start, nearly beating this year’s national champion, Tennessee, in the opener and thumping last year’s national champion, Michigan, in the second game. Then we scored 10 touchdowns on Rutgers. There were hopes of national championship and a Heisman Trophy. Both disappeared that awful night in Raleigh. Later came the ritual slaughter of Miami in the Dome, 66-13, and the dismal Orange Bowl performance vs. Florida, 10-31. Bassett ignored the bad stuff and ranked us #6.)
1999 1-2-6-2-4-4-12-5-6-11-8-4 = 5.42 (We got off to a good start but the collapse vs. Va Tech and the loss to Rutgers- like the 1954 Illinois team, the 1969 Kansas team and the 1978 Illinois team, we were the only team they could beat- ruined the season.)

Summary:
1990 4.54; 1991 4.00; 1992 3.66; 1993 6.36; 1994 6.36; 1995 4.00; 1996 3.00; 1997 3.69; 1998 3.67; 1999 5.42 Average for the decade: 4.47

2000’s

2000 3-6-8-1-3-6-3-5-4-6-5 = 4.55 (Not an outstanding team but at least they were fairly consistent. The season was most memorable for the attempted to gain revenge on Va Tech, which Troy Nunes, in a classic performance, literally threw away. Dwight Freeney also got hurt in that game, the third straight season ended or limited by a significant injury. Anmar had us #18.)
2001 7-11-2-3-1-8-2-1-3-4-11-3-1 = 4.38 (Our last winning season and our last really good team. The team was actually outgained on the year but went 10-3 thanks to a +15 turnover margin that was largely the product of having a healthy Dwight Freeney for the entire season for the first time. Without the two 11’s- both the Tennessee and Miami games were classic examples of playing strong teams in tough places to win and doing it poorly- this was a 3.16 team. Bassett has us at #7.)
2002 11-12-5-12-9-11-3-3-2-8-12 = 8.00 (This was the year things fell apart- the first time. The Rhode Island game was vs. a 1AA opponent and thus is not included. A series of horrible performances was broken up only by a strong first half at Auburn and Troy Nunes’ unexpected resurgence. The ship got righted- sort of- but this year was a harbinger of things to come.)
2003 9-7-3-1-12-1-11-2-6-7-11-4 = 7.00 (A marginally better team with no consistency at all, as shown by the midseason stretch of 1-12-1-11 vs. Toledo, VPI, BC and Pitt. I remember I was visiting my parents down south during the VPI game, which we lost 8-51, a sort of inferior sequel to the ‘99 game. My Mom, who isn’t a football fan, watched the game for a bit while sorting laundry in the next room. As she was passing me with the laundry basket she laughed and said, “They aren’t really very good, are they? No they weren’t, Mom.)
2004 11-7-4-8-5-5-8-3-3-10-1-12= 6.42 (The year of the book-end blow-outs. We opened on national TV with a 0-51 loss to Purdue and closed out the Pasqualoni era with a 14-51 loss to a Georgia Tech team that had been averaging 19 points a game in the Champ Sports Bowl. We also hit double figures vs. Temple, whose only other win was vs. Florida A&M. But the season will be forever remembered for the amazing performance of Diamond Ferri in the 43-17 win at Boston College.)
2005 4-3-6-11-8-10-8-10-10-11-8 = 8.09 (The G-Rob disaster got off to a decent start but then we unraveled badly. Most people, including me, recall that the really disappointing stretch began at Connecticut but by this measure it really began the previous week at Florida State, still another game where a tough opponent and a road game was no excuse for stinking up the joint.
2006 9-8-6-1-5-7-9-5-9-9-7-10 = 7.08 (Three wins in a row over bad teams to get us to 3-2 created some excitement early but 6 losses in the remaining seven games brought us back down to earth with a thud. The #1 game was Miami of Ohio, our only #1 performance of the G-Rob era. We at least managed to avoid any double figure games until the trip to Rutgers. )
2007 13-12-12-6-8-11-10-6-8-11-10-7 = 9.50 (Modern teams play more games so a bad performance gets penalized more in this system than in previous eras. The Washington opener was our first-ever “13” game. But by any measure the 2007 Syracuse is a major contender for the worse team ever to take the field in a Syracuse uniform. They were never better than the 6th best team any opponent played- even in the Louisville upset. It basically sealed G-Rob’s fate although he was allowed to dangle for another year.)
2008 11-10-11-9-8-12-6-8-11-6-11 = 9.36 (To paraphrase Mark Twain, better to not play a game and be thought to stink than to play one and remove all doubt. G-Rob absolutely had to win- and win now- to continue his career here. So he starts out with 11-10-11, the “10” being the Akron game- and they only question was: who would be our new coach? Greg’s two “greatest” wins were at Louisville and at Notre Dame. Both were #6’s. The Northeastern game is excluded because they were 1AA, or FCS if you prefer.)
2009 8-7-4-9-13-7-9-10-9-2-12 = 8.18 (A marginally improved team in HCDM”s first year. This is one year where my system may be slightly deceiving. West Virginia had an odd, but entertaining year in which every other game was either won or lost by 15 points or less so our modest 13-34 loss to them gets a #13. And, of course, we know what happened at UCONN. The Maine game is not included as it was a 1AA game.)

Summary:
2000 4.55; 2001 4.38; 2002 8.00; 2003 7.00; 2004 6.42; 2005 8.09; 2006 7.08; 2007 9.50; 2008 9.36; 2009 8.18 Average for the Decade: 7.26

2010’s

2010 5-13-4-13-3-2-8-6-9-10-6 = 7.18 (We went from 4-8 to 8-5 because we won close games and did it on the road. But we still made the bottom 25 thanks to “worst” performances vs. Washington and Pittsburgh and being shoved around by strong, veteran offensive lines at the end of the season. The Maine and Colgate games are excluded because they were FCS teams.)
2011- 4-8-3-6-11-1-13-9-9-9-10 = 7.55 (Rhode Island is an FCS team so they aren’t included: I’m sure they would have helped, as UMASS, Brown, Old Dominion, James Madison and Towson all beat the Rams by more than we did. I knew the Tulane game was a lousy performance but everyone Louisville played did better against them than we did. Our 20 point loss to South Florida in the Dome was the only win they had in their last games.)


Decade Averages:
1900’s 4.50; 1910’s 3.48 ; 1920’s 3.17; 1930’s 4.35 ; 1940’s ; 1950’s 3.58; 1960’s 3.97; 1970’s 6.60; 1980’s 5.38; 1990’s 4.47; 2000’s 7.26

SU’s major college opposition played an average of 10 games during the 1900’s, 9 during the 1910’s and 1920’s, 7 in the 1930’s, back to 9 in the 1940’s, 10 in the 1950’s and 1960’s, 11 in the 1970’s, and 1980’s, 12 in the 1990’s and 2000’s

The Top 25
1.18 - 1959
1.75 - 1918
1.80 - 1920
2.16 - 1917
2.29 - 1923
2.33 - 1934
2.40 - 1925
2.50 - 1958
2.64 - 1987
2.67 - 1915
2.75 - 1926
2.82 - 1961
2.89 - 1956
3.00 - 1919, 1996
3.10 - 1963
3.11 - 1960
3.14 - 1924
3.16 - 1921
3.20 - 1922
3.25 - 1953
3.40 - 1927
3.42 - 1988
3.50 - 1911
3.63 - 1950

 

[Eric15]

Here's another lengthy post I did on ranking SU's teams a few years ago, (that also needs updating). It's based on my system called "point differential rankings". If you beat a team by more than anyone else did or tie a team that won all its other games or lose to a team by the smallest margin, you get a '1', meaning you did better or as well as anyone else against that team. if one team did better, you get a '2'. If two teams did better, you get a '3', etc. then you average the rankings at the end of the schedule and that shows how consistently strong the team's performances were in that year.

Here then, is the rating of all the Syracuse teams since 1899, when Howell and Sorenson first consider SU to be a major college team, with the exception of 1903-04 when he drops us from that status temporarily. One weakness of the system is in years when less games are played by our opponents, a bad performance will tend to be rated higher than when more games are played. So a team like the 2007 Syracuse team will look worse than the 1936 team or the 1948 team when in fact they may not have been. The system is thus a bit better at rating good teams than bad teams.

1899 8-6-7-3 = 6.00 (I don’t know exactly what Sorenson’s and Howell’s criteria for a major college team is but this is the first year they have SU on their listings and they don’t have us in 1903 or 1904, either- there was no SU team in 1943. The number of games played in these early years was actually comparable to modern teams. Williams and Dickinson, both majors at the time, played 13 games while Cornell and Army played 10 and 9, respectively.)

1900’s

1900 3-11-6-3-4 = 5.40 (We were 7-2-1 overall and 2-2-1 vs. majors but we made the rankings for the first time- see my prior post “SU in the rankings”- They were ranked #11 by Howell, #13 by Albrecht, #16 by Sorenson and #20 by Doktor. There were 42 teams considered major college at this time. The #11 was a 0-43 squashing by the Princeton Tigers, huge power at that time.)
1901 6-4-3-3-2 = 3.60 ( We were 7-2 overall, 4-1 vs. major college teams and ranked as high as #8 by Sorenson.)
1902 2-7-5-7-5 = 4.80 (We started out with 4 small college teams and then played five major college teams. We only went 2-2-1, losing 0-24 to Yale in our first confrontation with that early-day super power. But it was enough to be ranked as high as #12 by Dokter.)
1903- 1904 We didn’t qualify as a major college. (Tell it Manhattan, whom we beat 144-0 on 11/5/04, a game suspended after 32 minutes. Manhattan failed to gain a single yard while SU scored 25 touchdowns.)
1905 4-2-6-7-2-7 = 4.66 (We were 8-3 overall, 3-3 vs. majors but unranked.)
1906 10-5-5-1-4 = 5.00 (We were 6-3 overall but only 2-3 vs. majors and lost 0-51 to national champion Yale. Still we were ranked as high as #12 by Sorenson.)
1907 3-3-3-6-3-6 = 4.00 (We were 6-2-1 overall, 2-2-1 vs. majors but had a scoreless tie with mighty Yale. But only Sorenson rated us- we were #19.)
1908 3-9-3-4-2 = 4.20 (We were 6-3-1 overall but only 1-3-1 vs. majors. However we played quite a major slate- Yale, Carlisle, Princeton, Colgate and the new midwestern power, Michigan. We crushed the Wolverines, 28-4 and played the Tigers to a 0-0 tie. We outscored these teams, 28-27 overall. We were ranked as high as #22 by Dokter but I think this team was probably the best we’d ever had to this point.)
1909 4-5-7-4-4-2 = 4.33 (We were 4-5-1 overall, 1-5-1 vs. majors. Michigan rolled us 0-44 in Ann Arbor.)

Summary:
1900 5.40; 1901 3.60; 1902 4.80; 1905 4.66; 1906 5.00; 1907 4.00; 1908 4.20; 1909 4.33 Average for the decade: 4.50.

1910’s

1910 6-1-6-5-1 = 3.80 (We were 5-4-1 overall but only 1-4 vs. the majors. The one win was 14-0 over Carlisle but this was not a year when Jim Thorpe was playing for them -he did from 1907-08 and 1911-12. The other #1 was a 0-3 loss to Illinois who went 7-0 and beat no less than three teams by that score.)
1911 4-7-2-1 = 3.50 (This time Big Jim was playing for Carlisle who beat 11 other opponents by a combined 287-37 but couldn’t beat Bill Orange: SU 12 Carlisle 11. But it was our only win over major team that year. We were 1-2-1 and 5-3-2 overall. Sorenson had us rated #24.)
1912 9-8-8-1-1-3-6 = 5.14 (We really went big-time this year, playing 7 of 9 games vs. big-time opposition. But we only won two of those games as Thorpe and Carlisle got a 0-33 revenge and Princeton destroyed us 0-62. But we beat Michigan and Lafayette worse than anyone else did. We were 4-5 overall.)
1913 5-6-6-4 = 5.25 (We dialed it back, playing only four big timers in 10 games. But we went 0-4, losing to powers Princeton, Michigan, Colgate and Carlisle by a combined 79 points. But we won the rest of them and were 6-4 overall.)
1914 5-2-3-4-3-5-3 = 3.57 (We were 5-3-2 overall and 2-3-2 vs. the bigs. It was the first of 22 straight winning seasons in all games for SU. The season ended on a sour note with a 0-40 beating by Dartmouth and a 0-20 loss in our first confrontation with Notre Dame. Nonetheless, Sorenson has us as #23. By this time there were 82 major college teams. The teams we faced played an average of 10 games.)
1915 3-3-4-3-1-2 = 2.67 (Our first great team. We were 9-1-2 overall, 4-1-1 vs. big-time teams. We lost only to Princeton, 0-3 and tied Dartmouth and then Montana on a three game western swing in a game that was literally played when they got off the train- and in a blizzard. One of the “small-time” teams they played was Oregon State. This team was invited to the first modern Rose Bowl to play Washington but the school decided they’d already spent the money for one western trip and didn’t want to pay for another. Their highest ranking was #15 by Howell. They probably should have been higher than that. They obliterated an undefeated Colgate team that had outscored five teams 223-0 by the score of SU 38 Colgate 0, a game that was talked about for decades afterwards as one of SU‘s very greatest performances)
1916 4-3-5-4 = 4.00 (A rebuilding year. We played four big time teams and got beat by all of them, including 0-30 to Pittsburgh’s first national championship team. The over-all record was 5-4.)
1917 1-7-1-1-1-2 = 2.16 (This team was even better than the 1915 team. They were ranked as high as #5 by Sorenson and were the best college team four of their six big-time opponents played. They got squashed again by Pitt, in the middle of a 33 game winning streak against collegiate teams, 0-28. They also won the first of a series of games against Midwestern power Nebraska, 10-9. We were 8-1-1 over all, 5-1 vs. big-time teams. One of the “small time“ teams was Michigan State. The #1‘s were Rutgers- who won all their other games with All-American Paul Robeson, Brown, Bucknell and Colgate)
1918 1-1-3-2= 1.75 (An abbreviated schedule- our big time opponents only played an average of 6 games- but another strong team, which lost only to undefeated Michigan. They didn’t have to play Pittsburgh who again won the national championship. We were 5-1 but 3-1 vs. big-time college teams.)
1919 2-1-3-3-3-3-1-5-6 = 3.00 (Another strong team that won one of the greatest victories in SU history, a 24-3 win over Pitt in Archbold that finally ended their 33 game winning streak. A Midwestern swing to end the season brought the Orange down a notch or two with losses to Indiana and Nebraska. We were 8-3 and 6-3 vs. a record 9 big-time teams)

Summary:
1910 3.80; 1911 3.50; 1912 5.14; 1913 5.25; 1914 3.57; 1915 2.67; 1916 4.00; 1917 2.16; 1918 1.75; 1919 3.00 Average for the decade: 3.48

1920’s

1920 1-1-1-3-3 = 1.80 (Chick Meehan got his coaching career off to a great start with this group who went 6-2-1- overall and 3-1-1 vs. the bigs. The first three games were all #1 performances, including a tie with unbeaten Pitt. They were ranked as high as #12 by Sorenson.)
1921- 1-2-9-2-3-2 = 3.16 (The low point was a 0-35 woodshed beating at Pitt. The highpoint was a 7-14 loss in Archbold to a 10-0 Washington and Jefferson team who beat everybody else worse and then went out to tie mighty California and it’s All-American, Brick Muller, in the Rose Bowl. Cal had a 49 game unbeaten string from 1920-25 and only they did better against W&J that year than the Orange did. We were 7-2 overall and 4-2 vs. the bigs and #15 in Howell‘s rankings.)
1922- 3-4-5-1-3 = 3.20 (The only team to beat the For Horseman of Notre Dame in the three years they were together as a unit was Nebraska and they did it twice. Nebraska lost three times in those years- once to Red Grange and Illinois and twice to Syracuse. This year’s Big Red were 7-0 and outscored their opponents 270-19 in their other games but we beat them 9-6 in Archbold. Roy Simmons said the team was told that Nebraska was sightseeing- they would be going to Niagara Falls over the game. That riled up the Orange. We were 6-1-2 overall and 2-1-2 vs. the bigs. Sorenson rated us #6, probably on the strength of the Nebraska game. Yes, there was more than one “Nebraska game”.)
1923- 1-1-4-2-2-4-2 = 2.29 (How would you like to beat Alabama and Nebraska in the same year? The Tide was just about to emerge as a national power when they came to Archbold and got beat 23-0, an afternoon in which Coach Wallace Wade said he learned more football than in all the rest of his career combined. At the end of the season SU traveled to Lincoln and repeated their win of the previous year, 7-0. Overall, we were 8-1 and 6-1 vs. the bigs. The one was an agonizing upset, 7-16, vs. arch-rival Colgate, a harbinger of things to come. Despite that, Howell rated SU his #1 team for 1923, our “other” national champion. Six of the seven big time teams we played had winning records. This team was also invited to the Rose Bowl but the administration again turned the offer down, to much controversy.)
1924 1-1-2-4-4-2-8 = 3.14 (Chick’s last SU team went 8-2-1 overall and 5-1-1 vs. the bigs. They somehow lost 0-3 to West Virginia Weslayan but were 8-1-1 when they got a trip to the west coast to play Southern California, perhaps to make up for the declined Rose Bowl invitation. They had a great time of it. “The Syracuse Football Story” by Ken Rapport shows the team posing on a movie set with the director and star, (unidentified). They did not have as good a time losing to the Trojans 0-16. Still they were ranked as high as #18 by Howell. One of the “small-time“ teams we played was Boston College.)
1925 1-2-4-5-1 = 2.40 (Colgate was unbeaten, including a 6-19 triumph over the Orange that began the “Hoodoo”. We were also unbeaten going into that game. We wound up 8-1-1 overall and 4-1 vs. the big-time schools. Somehow we were tied 3-3 by Ohio Weslayan- we should avoid the Weslayans. Howell and Sorenson had us at #17.)
1926 3-3-3-2= 2.75 (Against a watered-down schedule with only four big-time teams we went 7-2-1 but only 1-2-1 vs. the bigs. Sorenson did rate us #23.)
1927 1-4-4-3-5 = 3.40 (There was some slippage in the program as indicated by an overall record of 5-3-2, with another tie with Ohio Weslayan and a record vs. the bigs of 1-3-1. The highlight was a 19-6 win over Georgetown, then a major college team who beat their eight other opponents by a combined 377-2! But nobody ranked us for the first time in a decade.)
1928 3-6-4-8-3 = 4.80 (The slippage continued punctuated by a 6-30 loss to Colgate, which was becoming a power under Andy Kerr. We actually lost to Ohio Weslayan, 0-6. We were 4-4-1 overall but only 1-3-1 vs. big time teams.)
1929 7-5-4-3-5 = 4.80 (We were 6-3 overall but only 2-3 vs. the top level teams and unranked. Colgate rolled 0-21.)

Summary:
1920 1.80; 1921 3.16; 1922 3.20; 1923 2.29; 1924 3.14; 1925 2.40; 1926 2.75; 1927 3.40; 1928 4.80; 1929 4.80 Average for the decade: 3.17

1930’s

1930 6-4-5-3-3 = 4.20 (We were 5-2-2 overall but only 1-2-2 vs. big time teams, including another whipping at the hands of the Red Raiders, 7-36. )
1931 4-6-3-3-2 = 3.60 (We stormed into the Colgate game at 7-0 and limped back out, having lost 7-21 and then got held to a 0-0 tie with Columbia to end the season. Nonetheless we were back in the rankings, at least according to Albrecht who ranked us #17.)
1932 11-3-4-2-2 = 4.40 (We were starting to play more intersectional opponents- Florida the previous year and SMU this year. The Mustangs would be real good in a couple of years but they were only a 3-7-2 this year. We still managed to lost to them, 6-16 and only one team did worse, our first “double figure” game since the 1906 Yale debacle. We were also one of the nine teams who failed to score, 0-16, vs. Colgate in their “undefeated, untied, unscored upon and uninvited” year- people thought they should be in the Rose Bowl. We also managed to lose to Ohio Weslayan again, 12-19. We wound up 4-4-1 but only 1-3-1 vs. big time schools)
1933 2-8-2-6-4-6 = 4.67 (We were 4-4 overall but only 2-4 vs. the “bigs”. The fact that we played only two small-time teams is a change. Colgate got us again, 3-13.)
1934 3-3-1-1-3-3 = 2.33 (Our best team of the 1930’s. We won out first 6, including 10-0 over a Michigan State team that was 8-0 vs. everyone else. But then we came a cropper vs. Colgate, 2-13 and Columbia 0-12, both of whom finished 7-1. Albrecht had the highest ranking at #20 but this team was clearly better than the 1931 team, at least by this measure. We were 6-2 and 4-2 vs. the bigs.)
1935 4-6-3-4-4-3 = 4.00 (For the second year in a row we were 6-0 going into the Colgate game. For the 11th year in a row we couldn’t come up with a win, this time getting blown out 0-27. And all these games were played in Archbold Stadium because it was so much bigger than Colgate‘s field. We wound up 6-1-1 and 4-1-1 vs. the bigs. But nobody ranked us and the point differential rankings suggest why: this team wasn’t as strong as the 1935 team, despite the similar record.)
1936 6-8-7-4-7-6 = 6.33 (This year all the air came out of the balloon and we had our worst season since going 0-8-1 in 1892. The record was 0-6 vs. big time teams and 1-1 vs. the smalls, including Baldwin-Wallace who beat us 0-19- yes it was that bad. One thing I will say for this team was that they weren’t the worst team any of their opponents played- 6th of 8 vs. Cornell, 8th of 11 vs. Maryland, 7th of 8 vs. Penn State, 4th of 8 vs. Indiana, 7th of 8 vs. Columbia and 6th of 9 vs. Colgate. We were also 3 of 8 vs. Baldwin-Wallace and beat Clarkson 31-0. But we stunk, no doubt about it, and it cost Vic Hanson his job. )
1937 2-9-3-6-6 = 5.20 (Ossie Solem produced an improvement to 5-2-1 and 2-2-1 vs. big-time teams. But this was the season of the Wilmuth Sidat-Singh incident at Maryland where he was left in the locker room in deference to the authorities. That’s the “9“ but the point differential ranking indicates that this was just not a very good team. Colgate again beat us 0-7, the least year of the “Hoodoo”, during which we were 0-11-2 and got outscored 50-239 by our arch-rival in our own stadium.)
1938 1-1-5-6-3-9-5 = 4.29 (Not a great team but a memorable season for a number of reasons. The first #1 is a 53-0 win over Maryland in Archbold where Sidat-Singh and his teammates got a devastating revenge against the Terrapins for the situation they’d been put in the year before. Then came what Grantland Rice said was the greatest game he’d ever seen: the 19-17 win over a great Cornell team that wouldn’t lose against or two years in the famous “fifth down” game vs. Dartmouth. Later we finally ended the Hoodoo by beating Colgate 7-0. We also faced another undefeated, untied and unscored upon team, Duke - who did get invited to the Rose Bowl and lost in the final seconds to USC. But that team handled us 0-21 and Penn State beat us 6-33. Overall we were 5-3 an 4-3 vs. Big-time teams. It was a year of ups and downs but the ups sure were great.)
1939 4-1-7-2-7-3-7 = 4.43 (Not as memorable a season but the team wasn’t that much worse. The schedule may have been the toughest we had played to this point. The first four big time opponents, Cornell, Georgetown, Duke and Penn State were a combined 28-2-2. We managed to tie the Hoyas 13-13, who won all their other games.)

Summary:
1930 4.20; 1931 3.60; 1932 4.40; 1933 4.67; 1934 2.33; 1935 4.00; 1936 6.33; 1937 5.20; 1938 4.29; 1939 4.43 Average for the decade: 4.35

1940’s

1940 8-1-5-2-6-2-4 = 4.00 (The days of half the schedule being small-time teams were about gone: only one this year. We were 2-4-1 vs. the bigs. The highlight was tying a 6-1-1 Penn State team, 13-13.
1941 4-3-4-5-6-3 = 4.17 (The year of the famous reverse center play, which we used to upset Wisconsin 27-20. We had a good 5-2-1 record. Two of the wins were against small time teams, one of whom was Rutgers. Despite the record, it wasn’t that strong a team.)
1942 2-4-4-7 = 4.25 (In the last pre-war year we did have four “small time” opponents but two were Rutgers and Boston University, who wouldn’t stay that way. They also played a service team. We were 6-3 over all and 2-2 against big time college teams.
1943 Football was suspended for the war.
1944 9-8-5-5-8-1 = 6.00 (A disappointing return but at least we had fun beating Colgate 43-13. We were 2-4-1 with one win coming against a small-time team. )
1945 7-2-9-5-8-5-6 = 6.00 (We finally had an all-big time schedule. The problem is we didn’t have a big-time team to play it. In Ossie Solem’s final year we were 1-6. The bottom was a 0-8 loss to a 1-6-1 Dartmouth team.)
1946 8-5-1-8-3-2-6-8 = 5.13 (Solem’s assistant, Biggie Munn took over and produced a 4-5 record. Boston U. was still considered small-time so we were 3-5 vs. big time schools. The season ended with dismal 7-25 and 22-59 losses to Colgate and Columbia and Munn and his entire staff moved on to Michigan State.)
1947 9-3-7-9-6-4-8 = 6.57 (Reeves Baysinger, who had played for SU in the 20’s and been a jack of all trades since then for the University, filled the vacant spot for two difficult seasons. This year we went 3-6 but were only 1-6 vs. big time teams. But we did beat Colgate 7-0! The third game was a 0-40 disaster against the best team Penn State had prior to the Paterno era, a team that ran through the regular season 9-0, outscoring them 319-27. They set an NCAA record that still stands by “allowing” us a total offense of minus 47 yards in that game. They tied Doak Walker’s SMU team, 13-13 in the Cotton Bowl.)
1948 10-6-7-10-4-8-8-6 = 7.38 (The most famously bad SU team prior to the G-Rob era. We beat Niagara 13-9 in the opener and then lost to 8 straight big-time teams by a combined 76-235. Niagara gave up football after this season. The joke was if they couldn’t beat Syracuse they might as well quit the sport. The worst loss was a 0-48 loss to Northwestern’s Rose Bowl team. Unlike in 1936, we were the worst team Holy Cross and Northwestern played. We were 8th of 9 vs. Temple and Colgate, 7th of 9 vs. Cornell, 6th of 9 vs. Penn State and Columbia and 4th of 8 vs. Boston U, which was now considered a major college. Baysinger was let go after the season. The best we could get to replace him was some guy from Muhlenberg.)
1949 3-7-2-5-5-6-2-1 = 3.88 (Ben’s first team improved from 1-9 to 4-5. The 3.50 improvement in point differential ranking is easily the best in the school’s history: the second best was 2.00 when we got Donovan McNabb as our quarterback. Lafayette was considered small time. The #1 performance was vs. Colgate, #7 vs. Temple)

Summary:
1940 4.00; 1941 4.17; 1942 4.25; 1944 6.00; 1945 6.00; 1946 5.13; 1947 6.57; 1948 7.38; 1949 3.88 Average for the decade: 5.26

1950’s

1950 1-6-6-2-1-3-5-5 = 3.63 (The #1s were vs. Rutgers and Holy Cross, the #6‘s Temple and Cornell. We were 1-1 vs. small time teams, Lafayette and John Carroll and 4-4 vs. everyone else.)
1951 4-4-7-8-2-9-4-2 = 5.00 (The #2 was Boston U, the #9 Penn State. Lafayette was still not big-time. We lost 20-41 to undefeated Illinois’ Rose Bowl champions.)
1952 4-3-4-7-2-2-1-1-12 = 4.00 (The #1s were vs. Colgate and Fordham, the #12, of course, Alabama. We played no small-time teams but did lose to a service team, Bolling Field. We also got crushed 7-48 by Michigan State‘s national champions. Still we were ranked as high as #11 by Poling.)
1953 4-2-6-3-1-1-2-7 = 3.25 (The #1s were vs. Holy Cross and Cornell, #7 Villanova. Temple was not considered big-time any more. We were 4-3-1 vs. everyone else but the losses were by 6,7 and 1 point We were 18 points from being 9-0. Poling ranked us #24.)
1954 5-4-5-9-5-5-1-6 = 5.00 (The #1 was vs. Colgate, #9 Illinois- they were 1-8 but beat us 6-34. At least everybody was big-time this year, as would be the case for the next 28 seasons.)
1955 5-4-2-9-1-5-2-2 = 3.75 (The #1 was vs. Holy Cross, #9 Maryland, who went 10-0 until Oklahoma beat them in a bowl game. Every team we played had a winning record except Boston U. We were ranked as high as #14 by Poling.)
1956 3-6-3-3-2-2-2-1-4 = 2.89 (The #1 was vs. Colgate, the 61-7 game where Jim brown scored 43 points. #6 was the lone regular season loss to Pittsburgh. Our highest ranking was #8 by both AP and UPI as well as Riley.)
1957 6-3-1-6-6-5-5-4-5 = 4.55 (The #1 was vs. Cornell. The #6s were Iowa State- our last tie for 14 years, Nebraska- a 26-9 win over a 1-9 team- and Penn State. We were 20 points from being 9-0)
1958 2-4-1-1-2-4-1-2-4-4 = 2.50 (The #1s were Cornell, Nebraska and Boston U. There were no really bad performances. We lost one regular season game by one point- 13-14 to Holy Cross, a good program in those days under Dr. Eddie Anderson. So did Oklahoma, who beat us 6-21 in the Orange Bowl. Our highest ranking was #8 by poling.)
1959 1-1-1-2-1-1-2-1-1-1-1 = 1.18 (The #1s were Kansas, Maryland, Navy, West Virginia, Pittsburgh, Colgate, Boston U., UCLA and Texas. If you don‘t know all about this season, you should. We led the country in scoring, yards gained, rushing yards gained, touchdown passes, first downs, fewest yards surrendered and fewest rushing guards given up, the later 19.3 per game, second all time to the 1947 Penn State team. We outgained our opposition by a ratio of 451-96 yards per game, a record that will never be broken. We were #1 in virtually all the polls, including the ones that really counted- AP and UPI.)

Summary:
1950 3.63; 1951 5.00; 1952 4.00; 1953 3.25; 1954 5.00; 1955 3.75; 1956 2.89; 1957 4.55; 1958 2.50; 1959 1.18 Average for the decade: 3.58

1960’s

1960 2-2-2-2-1-9-5-1-4 = 3.11 (The #1’s were West Virginia and Colgate, the #9 Pittsburgh, who ended our 16 game winning streak, 0-10, the team‘s worst performance, by this measure, in 5 years. Still we were ranked as high as #15 by Albrecht.)
1961 2-1-4-1-5-1-2-1-6-4-4 = 2.82 (The #1’s were West Virginia, Nebraska, Holy Cross and Colgate, the last game against them for 21 years. In the Schwartzwalder Era, we played Colgate 13 times, won 12 and laid the worst whipping of the year on them 6 times. The #6 game was Notre Dame. This team was a bit snake-bit, losing by a point to Maryland an on that field goal after time had expired vs. Notre Dame. It could have been a 10-1 team. Poling had us as high as #10.)
1962 4-6-2-3-3-10-2-1-6-5 = 4.20 (The #1 was George Washington The #10 stinker was again vs. Pitt)
1963 2-6-1-3-1-2-5-6-1-4 = 3.10 (The #1’s were Holy Cross, Penn State and Richmond. The #6’s were Kansas and West Virginia. UPI had us at #12.)
1964 7-1-2-1-3-11-2-3-3-5-5 = 3.91 (One of our most inconsistent teams. The #1’s were 38-6 over Gayle Sayers and Kansas thanks to Floyd Little’s 5TDs and 39-0 over an undefeated UCLA team- the first gamer my father ever took me to. The #10 was to Oregon State’s Rose Bowl team, 13-31 on the west coast. That doesn’t sound too bad but the #10 ranking indicates that, like that 1991 FSU game, the fact that an opponent is good doesn’t mean that a decisive loss to them should be excused. We were again #12 in UPI.)
1965 3-9-2-8-2-2-2-6-3-4 = 3.90 (The first time since 1951 that we weren’t the best team somebody played by this measure. The #9 game was 0-24 home loss to a 5-4-1 Miami team. The #8 game was another west coast loss to a Rose Bowl team, UCLA, whom we had handled so well in previous years. Poling had us at #14.)
1966 10-7-3-3-1-1-3-5-1-2-4 = 3.64 (This year’s stinker was an opening national TV 12-35 loss at Baylor, a team that would win up 5-5. Then we got killed by UCLA at home and went on the longest winning streak since the national title year, 8 in a row, with #1’s over Boston College, Holy Cross and Florida State. UPI had us at #16.)
1967 5-1-9-10-5-6-8-1-3-1 = 4.90 (Often thought of as Ben Schwartzwalder’s last really good team, this was actually his worst team in 16 years- by this measure, anyway. It consisted of Larry Csonka and a good defense. Larry got a record 43 carries vs. Maryland for 181 yards. We beat an 0-9 team by 7-3. Everybody else beat them by more. The loss the next week at Navy was also the worst performance against them. And yet we had three #1 performances: West Virginia, Holy Cross and UCLA, the last by 32-14 the week after their famous game with USC and OJ Simpson and our last west coast victory to date. UPI had us at #12.)
1968 6-4-5-5-10-1-2-1-6-7 = 4.70 (We now began our serious slide into mediocrity. We were ranked #10 going out to California but by the end of the season, none of our performances prior to that looked very impressive. We did have a couple #1’s after that trip, vs. Holy Cross and Navy.)
1969 7-10-2-7-1-7-1-7-3-9 = 5.40 (This team was, like the 1967 team, a fine defensive team but it had no Csonka, which was too bad because it lost two games by a point and one by 3 points in a 5-5 season. But it wasn’t really that good a team. The #10 game was a 0-13 loss to Kansas, which like Illinois in 1954, lost all of it’s other games. The #9 game to BC was also the worst performance against them all year. The #1’s were our 14-15 loss to Penn State -see U-Tube- where we fumbled away a 14-0 lead and Arizona.)

Summary:
1960 3.11; 1961 2.82; 1962 4.20; 1963 3.10; 1964 3.91; 1965 3.90; 1966 3.64; 1967 4.90; 1968 4.70; 1969 5.40 Average for decade: 3.97

1970’s

1970 8-9-10-4-2-6-2-8-6-1 = 5.60 (This was the year of the black boycott which produced a horrific start, then a sharp comeback with a 5 game winning streak, including the 24-7 win at Penn State, our last over them for 17 years. The Miami game at the end was almost identical to the 1998 game: we led 42-7 at halftime and won 56-16.)
1971 7-6-6-5-6-1-11-3-10-4-5 = 5.82 (This team started out being ranked #13 in the pre-season AP Poll. It wound up our worse team since 1948. The #1 was Holy Cross. #11 was Pitt and #10 was Navy)
1972 3-9-10-5-9-4-7-10-11-3-10 = 7.36 (The collapse everybody thinks occurred the next year really began this year. The “double figure” games were Wisconsin, Pittsburgh, Boston College and West Virginia. We managed to win several close games over bad teams and finish 5-6 but this was a bad team.)
1973 10-9-10-12-8-10-10-4-4-2-9 = 8.00 (The bottom of the barrel. The Schwartzwalder Era is a bell curve, starting from the terrible 1948 the year before Ben came and ending with this mess. The “double figure” games were Bowling Green, Washington, Maryland, Penn State and Miami.)
1974 4-5-8-7-8-4-7-7-11-9-8= 7.09 (Frank Maloney’s first team had the same record as Ben Schwartzwalder’s last team but was a noticeably better team until they ran of gas at the end of the year. The #11 game was West Virginia.)
1975 5-7-3-8-5-8-4-9-4-3-4 = 5.45 (Frank’s second team was much improved, won it’s first three games and was being considered for a bowl until our loss to Rutgers. The Pitt game, 0-38, complete with a Connecticut-like long bomb for a score at the end, was the #9 game.)
1976 9-11-6-5-8-11-4-2-9-7-9 = 7.36 (Frank’s third team sharply backslid. After the Iowa game- the first #11- Frank said that we were the worst team in the country. The other #11 was Penn State. The #2 was the famous Pittsburgh game, when the refs moved the ball back two plays in a row to deprive us of a key first down vs. the national champs. We played two 11-0 teams that year- Maryland and Pitt. The Terps lost in the Cotton Bowl to Houston. The Panthers beat Georgia in the Sugar for the national title.)
1977- 11-12-3-8-9-4-4-9-4-3-3 = 6.36 (A mild comeback after a horrendous start. We were the worst team- by this measure- both Oregon State and North Carolina State, our first two opponents, played.)
1978- 10-6-6-11-5-7-10-5-3-4-10 = 7.00 (Bill Hurley got racked up by Florida State in the first game and any hope of a good season disappeared with him. Illinois went 1-8-2 that year: we were the “1“.)
1979- 7-5-4-3-6-10-11-4-4-2-9-1 = 6.00 (Frank Maloney’s best team laid two huge eggs in mid-season vs. Temple and Penn State and another in the rain at Schoellkopf Field vs. a bad BC team. McNeese St. was 11-0 and a D1A team- they dropped down to 1AA shortly afterward- when we blitzed them in the bowl game.)

Summary:
1970 5.60; 1971 5.82; 1972 7.36; 1973 8.00; 1974 7.09; 1975 5.45; 1976 7.36; 1977 6.36; 1978 7.00; 1979 6.00 Average per decade: 6.60

1980’s

1980: 5-2-6-10-3-10-2-11-4-7-3 = 5.73 (This 5-6 team actually performed slightly better than the previous year’s 7-5 team- by this measure- even if Joe Morris missed several games with an injury. The first “10” was Kansas, the first game he missed. The others were Penn State and Pittsburgh, which had one of the best teams I‘ve ever seen that year. Still, every opponent but one did better than to lose to them 6-43.)
1981: 7-7-6-7-7-7-4-1-8-5-3 = 5.64 (Coach Mac’s first year was considered a disappointment. He took over a veteran team with a healthy Joe Morris and went 4-6-1, a worse record than Maloney’s last. But his team actually performed at a slightly higher level- by this measure. It was also an amazingly consistent team, if not a consistently good team, being the 7th best team 5 of our first 6 opponents played- and we were #6 to the other team. The #1 was Colgate.)
1982- 4-8-11-9-10-10-6-6-6-9 = 7.90 (Coach Mac found the cupboard bare in his second year and had to play young players with dire results. The Colgate game is not included as they were not a Division 1A team- they had been when we played them the previous year.)
1983- 10-4-5-7-12-10-10-6-7-1-3 = 6.82 (We were growing up. The 1980 Pitt may have been the best college defensive team I’ve ever seen. This year’s Nebraska team might have been the best offensive team. But our 7-63 margin of defeat was topped by one team: Minnesota, an 84-13 victim. )
1984- 1-9-9-2-7-7-10-2-5-1-4 = 5.18 (A very inconsistent team. The Nebraska game fell short of being a #1 game by the virtue of that unnecessary safety we took at the end of the game: Oklahoma beat the Huskers 17-7. This was our first ranked team in 17 years, #22 by Dokter.)
1985- 11-1-6-1-5-1-3-3-3-4-6-7 = 4.25 (Our best team since 1966. And after the dreadful opener, were 3.64 for the rest of the season. The same as ‘66. Getting to the Cherry Bowl turned our recruiting around and set us up for what happened two years later. But no one ranked us.)
1986- 9-7-10-8-2-12-5-4-7-10-5 = 7.18 (The ball rolled back down the hill- temporarily. The #12 game was Penn State. Our average rating vs. them during their 16 game winning streak over us was 8.63- we were on average, the 8th or 9th best team they played. They were certainly better than us but the other teams they played were a lot better against them than we were.)
1987- 4-2-3-3-3-1-1-3-1-6-2 = 2.64 (Again, Colgate was 1AA so they weren’t included. If they were, they‘d have joined Penn State, Colgate, Pittsburgh and Boston College, giving up four #1 punch-outs in five games. Ranma had us as high as #2. )
1988- 6-10-1-3-1-3-1-2-3-7-2-2 = 3.42 (A strong follow-up to our “dream year” and an indication that we were in for a good, long run. Except for the lousy performance at Ohio State, this team was very similar to the previous year’s team, both incredibly consistent. Of 24 games in 1987-88 we were one of the top three teams each opponent faced- by this measure- 19 times. ESPN ranked us #10.)
1989- 2-4-7-9-11-1-5-4-3-7-1-6 = 5.00 (A step backwards. Florida State and Penn State were certainly very good teams but we weren’t very good against them.)

Summary:
1980 5.73; 1981 5.63; 1982 7.90; 1983 6.82; 1984 5.18; 1985 4.25; 1986 7.18; 1987; 2.64; 1988; 3.42; 1989 5.00 Average for decade: 5.38

1990’s

1990 12-4-4-8-3-6-1-3-2-8-1-5-2 = 4.54 (We opened in the Kick-off classic losing to USC 16-34. Well, it was USC. But it was a lousy performance and we should have beaten that team and added them to our list of famous scalps: Nebraska, Penn State, LSU, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Miami, etc.; we lifted in this era. It was a much worse performance than our 7-33 loss to Miami at the end of the season. UPI had us #21.)
1991 3-5-1-5-12-3-4-4-4-1-4-2 = 4.00 (See above. The “12” is, of course, that baffling Florida State game that started me down this road. We were #7 in Mark.)
1992 3-3-10-4-1-4-5-3-2-2-5-2 = 3.66 (Our most consistently good team since 1987-88, spoiled only by the Ohio State game in the Dome, another game where we kept running the near-side option over and over again even though it wasn’t working. Without that, we were 2.83. UPI had us at #6.)
1993 2-6-6-3-5-8-12-12-4-8-4 = 6.36 (This team had high expectations but totally fell apart in mid-season. The Miami and West Virginia games were consecutive “worst” performances- 12th of 12.)
1994 7-5-5-4-4-2-9-6-12-6-10 = 6.36 (This team didn’t have the horrendous losses of the previous year, although the Mike Mamula game at BC was another 12, but it also didn’t have much in the way of strong performances.)
1995 3-4-5-5-5-2-2-9-2-3-7-1 = 4.00 (This was a very consistent team until the trip to Blacksburg. I remember we gave the ball to Rob Konrad several times and he punched a hole in the Hokie’s 8 man line repeatedly until we scored on the opening drive. A second Csonka had arrived!. He never got the ball the rest of the game. We went into “near-side option” mode and gave up 31 unanswered points. The Gator Bowl blow-out of Clemson was the first #1 performance by the Orange since Rutgers back in 1992.Marsee had us at #13.)
1996 5-8-1-2-3-2-1-1-1-4-5-3 = 3.00 (The best Pasqualoni team and the best Syracuse team in the years since the 1987 “dream” year. After fumbling away the Minnesota game, the went on tremendous tear, going 1.57 over their next seven games. The four #1 performances- VPI, West Virginia, Tulane, Army, who was 9-0 at the time- were the most since the 1959 team. I recall Coach P crediting the success to his being converted by his assistants to the concept of an “attack” defense, rather than “read and cover“, something Scott Shafer is trying to create now. We were #12 in Bassett, Dokter and Dolphin)
1997 1-6-9-9-4-1-2-1-1-5-3-2-4 = 3.69 (Similar to the previous year’s team, after a 1-3 start we strung together 8 wins in a row. This one wasn’t quite as good, although it got four more #1’s - Wisconsin, East Carolina, Temple, West Virginia. Oklahoma was another big-time scalp we should have gotten, either in 1994 or this year. Bassett had us at #17.)
1998 1-2-1-12-1-4-5-5-3-2-1-7 = 3.67 (The last McNabb team got off to a great start, nearly beating this year’s national champion, Tennessee, in the opener and thumping last year’s national champion, Michigan, in the second game. Then we scored 10 touchdowns on Rutgers. There were hopes of national championship and a Heisman Trophy. Both disappeared that awful night in Raleigh. Later came the ritual slaughter of Miami in the Dome, 66-13, and the dismal Orange Bowl performance vs. Florida, 10-31. Bassett ignored the bad stuff and ranked us #6.)
1999 1-2-6-2-4-4-12-5-6-11-8-4 = 5.42 (We got off to a good start but the collapse vs. Va Tech and the loss to Rutgers- like the 1954 Illinois team, the 1969 Kansas team and the 1978 Illinois team, we were the only team they could beat- ruined the season.)

Summary:
1990 4.54; 1991 4.00; 1992 3.66; 1993 6.36; 1994 6.36; 1995 4.00; 1996 3.00; 1997 3.69; 1998 3.67; 1999 5.42 Average for the decade: 4.47

2000’s

2000 3-6-8-1-3-6-3-5-4-6-5 = 4.55 (Not an outstanding team but at least they were fairly consistent. The season was most memorable for the attempted to gain revenge on Va Tech, which Troy Nunes, in a classic performance, literally threw away. Dwight Freeney also got hurt in that game, the third straight season ended or limited by a significant injury. Anmar had us #18.)
2001 7-11-2-3-1-8-2-1-3-4-11-3-1 = 4.38 (Our last winning season and our last really good team. The team was actually outgained on the year but went 10-3 thanks to a +15 turnover margin that was largely the product of having a healthy Dwight Freeney for the entire season for the first time. Without the two 11’s- both the Tennessee and Miami games were classic examples of playing strong teams in tough places to win and doing it poorly- this was a 3.16 team. Bassett has us at #7.)
2002 11-12-5-12-9-11-3-3-2-8-12 = 8.00 (This was the year things fell apart- the first time. The Rhode Island game was vs. a 1AA opponent and thus is not included. A series of horrible performances was broken up only by a strong first half at Auburn and Troy Nunes’ unexpected resurgence. The ship got righted- sort of- but this year was a harbinger of things to come.)
2003 9-7-3-1-12-1-11-2-6-7-11-4 = 7.00 (A marginally better team with no consistency at all, as shown by the midseason stretch of 1-12-1-11 vs. Toledo, VPI, BC and Pitt. I remember I was visiting my parents down south during the VPI game, which we lost 8-51, a sort of inferior sequel to the ‘99 game. My Mom, who isn’t a football fan, watched the game for a bit while sorting laundry in the next room. As she was passing me with the laundry basket she laughed and said, “They aren’t really very good, are they? No they weren’t, Mom.)
2004 11-7-4-8-5-5-8-3-3-10-1-12= 6.42 (The year of the book-end blow-outs. We opened on national TV with a 0-51 loss to Purdue and closed out the Pasqualoni era with a 14-51 loss to a Georgia Tech team that had been averaging 19 points a game in the Champ Sports Bowl. We also hit double figures vs. Temple, whose only other win was vs. Florida A&M. But the season will be forever remembered for the amazing performance of Diamond Ferri in the 43-17 win at Boston College.)
2005 4-3-6-11-8-10-8-10-10-11-8 = 8.09 (The G-Rob disaster got off to a decent start but then we unraveled badly. Most people, including me, recall that the really disappointing stretch began at Connecticut but by this measure it really began the previous week at Florida State, still another game where a tough opponent and a road game was no excuse for stinking up the joint.
2006 9-8-6-1-5-7-9-5-9-9-7-10 = 7.08 (Three wins in a row over bad teams to get us to 3-2 created some excitement early but 6 losses in the remaining seven games brought us back down to earth with a thud. The #1 game was Miami of Ohio, our only #1 performance of the G-Rob era. We at least managed to avoid any double figure games until the trip to Rutgers. )
2007 13-12-12-6-8-11-10-6-8-11-10-7 = 9.50 (Modern teams play more games so a bad performance gets penalized more in this system than in previous eras. The Washington opener was our first-ever “13” game. But by any measure the 2007 Syracuse is a major contender for the worse team ever to take the field in a Syracuse uniform. They were never better than the 6th best team any opponent played- even in the Louisville upset. It basically sealed G-Rob’s fate although he was allowed to dangle for another year.)
2008 11-10-11-9-8-12-6-8-11-6-11 = 9.36 (To paraphrase Mark Twain, better to not play a game and be thought to stink than to play one and remove all doubt. G-Rob absolutely had to win- and win now- to continue his career here. So he starts out with 11-10-11, the “10” being the Akron game- and they only question was: who would be our new coach? Greg’s two “greatest” wins were at Louisville and at Notre Dame. Both were #6’s. The Northeastern game is excluded because they were 1AA, or FCS if you prefer.)
2009 8-7-4-9-13-7-9-10-9-2-12 = 8.18 (A marginally improved team in HCDM”s first year. This is one year where my system may be slightly deceiving. West Virginia had an odd, but entertaining year in which every other game was either won or lost by 15 points or less so our modest 13-34 loss to them gets a #13. And, of course, we know what happened at UCONN. The Maine game is not included as it was a 1AA game.)

Summary:
2000 4.55; 2001 4.38; 2002 8.00; 2003 7.00; 2004 6.42; 2005 8.09; 2006 7.08; 2007 9.50; 2008 9.36; 2009 8.18 Average for the Decade: 7.26

2010’s

2010 5-13-4-13-3-2-8-6-9-10-6 = 7.18 (We went from 4-8 to 8-5 because we won close games and did it on the road. But we still made the bottom 25 thanks to “worst” performances vs. Washington and Pittsburgh and being shoved around by strong, veteran offensive lines at the end of the season. The Maine and Colgate games are excluded because they were FCS teams.)
2011- 4-8-3-6-11-1-13-9-9-9-10 = 7.55 (Rhode Island is an FCS team so they aren’t included: I’m sure they would have helped, as UMASS, Brown, Old Dominion, James Madison and Towson all beat the Rams by more than we did. I knew the Tulane game was a lousy performance but everyone Louisville played did better against them than we did. Our 20 point loss to South Florida in the Dome was the only win they had in their last games.)


Decade Averages:
1900’s 4.50; 1910’s 3.48 ; 1920’s 3.17; 1930’s 4.35 ; 1940’s ; 1950’s 3.58; 1960’s 3.97; 1970’s 6.60; 1980’s 5.38; 1990’s 4.47; 2000’s 7.26

SU’s major college opposition played an average of 10 games during the 1900’s, 9 during the 1910’s and 1920’s, 7 in the 1930’s, back to 9 in the 1940’s, 10 in the 1950’s and 1960’s, 11 in the 1970’s, and 1980’s, 12 in the 1990’s and 2000’s

The Top 25
1.18 - 1959
1.75 - 1918
1.80 - 1920
2.16 - 1917
2.29 - 1923
2.33 - 1934
2.40 - 1925
2.50 - 1958
2.64 - 1987
2.67 - 1915
2.75 - 1926
2.82 - 1961
2.89 - 1956
3.00 - 1919, 1996
3.10 - 1963
3.11 - 1960
3.14 - 1924
3.16 - 1921
3.20 - 1922
3.25 - 1953
3.40 - 1927
3.42 - 1988
3.50 - 1911
3.63 - 1950

I feel like I owe you money after having read this entire post.

 

[SWC75]

I feel like I owe you money after having read this entire post.

Actually, I probably owe you money for reading this entire post.

 

[OttoinGrotto]

Actually, I probably owe you money for reading this entire post.

You could set up a Patreon!

 

[OttoMets]

...Add another, say, 16 hours from Syracuse to Chicago. So they must have left on Saturday night or Sunday, left Chicago Monday morning at 10:30am, and pulled into Missoula around the same time on Wednesday.

I'll have to look more later to see how long it would have taken to get to Portland and then LA.

Minor correction, East Coast and some Midwest early 20th-century trains in the main corridors made better time than everything other than the Acela trains today. New York to Chicago was under a 16 hour trip, so Syracuse was probably closer to 12.

West Coast was probably a lot slower, though.

 

[LeMoyneCuse]

Minor correction, East Coast and some Midwest early 20th-century trains in the main corridors made better time than everything other than the Acela trains today. New York to Chicago was under a 16 hour trip, so Syracuse was probably closer to 12.

West Coast was probably a lot slower, though.

True - I went conservative on the timing, not accounting for the fact that more frequent passenger traffic likely meant these trains were prioritized over freight, an issue that plagues Amtrak.