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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 4164836, member: 289"] 1957 [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.tiptop25.com/champ1957.html[/URL] [URL unfurl="true"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1957_NCAA_University_Division_football_rankings[/URL] [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.tiptop25.com/fixing1957.html[/URL] The 1957 national championship race had a lot of moving parts. On the surface, it seems obvious that Auburn should be considered the national champion: they were a power conference team that won all their games in a year when no other power conference team did. In most years, that resolves the issue. But if you look at the final AP poll, you’ll see that no less than 8 teams got first place votes. Auburn did get 210 of the 359 votes but that’s only 58.5%. Vautravers article on the national championship outlines all the lobbying that went into the final vote, which caused AP to change its rules, allocating votes in equal portions to each section of the country. In 1957, there were more voters in the south than in any other section. And remember, these were the guys who voted Jim Brown 5th in the 1956 Heisman race. On top of that there’s the issue that comes up all the time in this era: Auburn was a segregated team that played only segregated teams. Ohio State and Michigan State were integrated teams that played integrated teams. Then there was the fact that Auburn was on probation. That kept them out of a bowl game but, interestingly, that didn’t keep them out of the UPI, (coach’s poll). Later on the coaches agreed to simply ignore teams on probation but they had no such rule in 1957. It’s just that coaches were reluctant to declare a team on probation their national champion. They may have regarded Auburn as the best team. Then there’s Auburn’s ‘performance’. They had a roller coaster season in terms of their scores. The Tigers beat Chattanooga 40-7, Houston, (then a mid-major as they have been in recent years, not an SWC team yet) 48-7, Florida State 29-7, and Alabama 40-0. Those last two scores sound impressive but Florida State was emerging as a football program at this time: they’d been a girls school until 1947, then a small college and were closer to a mid-major at this time. Bama was coached by J. B. ‘Ears’ Whitworth, surely the worst coach of all time: in three years at Alabama, he went 4-24-2, which caused the administration to beg Bear Bryant to come and save them. Against their other six opponents the War Eagles scored just 50 points. But they gave up only a single touchdown. Three of those teams were ranked. As Vautravers points out, you’ve got to consider the style of play of a team and Auburn’s strength was one of the great defenses of all time, one that gave up only 28 points in ten games. Their offense was conservative even by the standards of the 1950’s, taking care of the ball, grinding out drives on the ground and punting to get out of trouble. They were looking to win, not for style points. Because of the over-matched opponents, they managed to out-score their foes 207-28 overall but they were one of the least exciting national champions ever. Still it worked for them: they had a 24 game undefeated string from 1956-1958 before Tennessee beat them in the 1959 opener, (by 0-3, naturally). Ohio State and Michigan State were almost twins, both going 8-1 with upsets by 4 and 7 points to team that went 5-4, (actually TCU was 5-4-1. The Buckeyes out-scored their opponents by 257-85 and the Spartans by 264-75. Both had flashy wins: Ohio State 17-13 over Iowa in the biggest and most dramatic game of the year and 31-14 over Michigan and Michigan State 35-6 over Michigan and 34-6 over Notre Dame a week before the Irish ended Oklahoma’s 47 game winning streak. Michigan State also has an ax to grind with the refs, who erroneously used a dead-ball foul to negate as touchdown in their 13-20 loss to Purdue: they might have been 8-0-1. The differences between the two teams were that the Spartans loss was in conference and the Buckeyes was not so Ohio State got the Rose Bowl invite to face a 7-2 Oregon team that wasn’t even in AP’s top 20, (UPI had them at #17), and barely beat them 10-7, in a game where the Ducks out played them in the other statistics: [MEDIA=youtube]ZMlU0K7S6gc:68[/MEDIA] (Note broadcast legends doing the game: The Lakers' Chick Hearn and the Yankees’ Mel Allen!) One wonders if the coaches might have dropped the Buckeyes below Auburn in a post bowl poll. Vautravers dismisses Oklahoma, who went 9-1, losing to Notre Dame 0-7 to lose their streak. But then they won 13 of their next 14 games, losing only by a point to Texas in 1958. They beat Duke 48-21 in the 1958 Orange Bowl, out-scoring their opponents on the year 333-89. They were still Oklahoma. Were I an AP voter voting on whether should be any additional games for 1958, I’d be torn between simply acknowledging the only contender with a perfect record or seeing what they could do against the Big Ten powers. And if I included them in, I’d also include Oklahoma. I think I’ll go ‘big tent’: Oklahoma plays Auburn while Ohio State and Michigan State slug it out to see who is really the best team in the Big Ten. Then the winners meet for the 1957 national championship. But of course, if Auburn is excluded entirely, then you’ve got just the one-loss teams. I’m against probation. I prefer a surgical approach with player ineligibility, coach suspensions or banishments and fines. So, in this fantasy, I’ll pretend that that was done instead. Afterall, both the writers and the coaches were allowed to vote for Auburn. [/QUOTE]

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