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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 4203842, member: 289"] 1964 [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.tiptop25.com/champ1964.html[/URL] [URL unfurl="true"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_NCAA_University_Division_football_rankings[/URL] [URL="http://www.tiptop25.com/fixing1964.html"]Fixing the 1964 AP Poll[/URL] This year was “another fine mess” but the solution seems obvious. I have relatives in Arkansas, (my Mom came from there), and down there they KNOW who was the 1964 national champion. The writer’s poll came out first and had Mississippi #1. But this was the year the Rebel’s coach turned back into pumpkin. From 1952-1963 they’d gone 96-16-7 with four unbeaten regular seasons and five more with 1 loss. Their last such season before that was in 1910 and they’ve never had one since. They lost their second game to Kentucky 21-27, then to Florida two weeks later, 14-30, and later were tied by Vanderbilt 7-7, beaten by LSU 10-11 and Mississippi State 17-20 before losing a minor bowl game to Tulsa 7-14 to finish 5-5-1. Their years of contending for a national championship were over, probably due to the rise of Georgia and Florida on the Gulf Coast and then the integration of the SEC, which was slower at Ole Miss than elsewhere. They had been the primary focus of the war between segregationists and the rest of the country. The second writer’s and the first coach’s poll had Texas #1and they remained there for three weeks until they lost an epic duel with Arkansas, 14-14. This was when that rivalry became nationally prominent and several of the best remembered games of the 1960’s were Texas-Arkansas games. Ohio State then took over #1 for two weeks until a too close 21-10 win over Iowa combined with Notre Dame’s 40-0 demolition of Navy, who had lost their star quarterback, Roger Staubach to injury, put them at #1 for the first time since the beginning of the 1954 season. The Buckeye then got totally taken out of contention by Penn State 0-27. The Irish were the big story of the year. Sports needs their stars to shine and college football is better when Notre Dame is Notre Dame. They’d been through a fallow period, going 34-45 from 1956-63. They kept losing to Northwestern, coach by Ara Parseghian, who beat them four straight times from 1959-62, the last by 35-6. So they hired him and he immediately took over a team that had gone 2-7 (108-159) in 1963 and won their first 9 games in a row by a combined 270-57 (30-6) with the same players, (remember that freshmen weren’t eligible and there was no transfer portal). He took John Huarte, who was playing safety in 1963 and put him at quarterback, where he won the 1964 Heisman Trophy. They led Southern California 17-0 going into the fourth quarter of their last game. I was eleven years old at the time and had seen “Knute Rockne, All-American” and was rooting them to win their first national title since 1949, (although I agree with Vautravers that they should have been considered the 1953 national champion). The Trojan rallied to win 20-17 and I cried myself to sleep humming the Notre Dame victory march. That left two 10-0-0 teams at #1 and #2: Alabama (233-67) and Arkansas. (221-57). The Tide had by far the greater history and an edge in recent success, having beaten the Razorbacks in the Sugar Bowl after the 1961 season to win their first national championship of the poll era. So they were #1. Actually Arkansas’ 1964 record looks a lot like Alabama’s 1961 record. Bama had shut out their last 5 regular season opponents that year and Arkansas did it this year. Behind them were 9-1, (by one quarter), Notre Dame, Michigan, who had their best team since 1948 and won the Big 10 with an 8-1 record, and 9-1, (by one point) Texas, and Nebraska, who had started out 9-0 before being upset by Oklahoma, 7-17. In the bowl games, Arkansas won a defensive duel with Nebraska on a late touchdown, 10-7 in the Cotton Bowl. Michigan ran past Oregon State, 34-7 in the Rose Bowl and, in an unprecedented night game, Texas stopped Alabama at the goal line, (we think), in the Orange Bowl to win 21-17. (The Sugar Bowl featured a battle of two 7 win teams, LSU beating Syracuse 13-10). Cotton Bowl: [MEDIA=youtube]-ZP1-_V_vUY[/MEDIA] Rose Bowl: [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3l8UMhmBZQ&t=112s"]1965 Rose Bowl: Michigan 34 Oregon State 7[/URL] Orange Bowl: [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B59eq7f1EA"]1965 Orange Bowl, #5 Texas vs #1 Alabama (Rites of Autumn)[/URL] That left Arkansas as the only 11-0 team with Alabama, Texas, Notre Dame and Michigan all have single losses. Some kind of five team playoff, (or a four team one to see who would face Arkansas) might have bene fun but it seems unnecessary. The thing is, we were still in the era when the last poll was at the end of the regular season and Alabama went into the ‘books’, (I don’t know where they keep them), as the 1964 national champion. That created enough controversy that the following year, the Associated Press decided to have a poll after the bowls that ‘counted’ for the first time – and Alabama, who had a loss and a tie and had bene ranked #4, won that two, for their second straight national championship in a year when they didn’t have the best record. Karma came the next year when the Tide went 11-0 and found themselves ranked behind Notre Dame and Michigan State, who had tied each other. But there is no doubt in Arkansas who was #1. Frank Broyles had quite a coaching tree. Barry Switzer and Johnny majors were assistants on his staff and Jimmy Johnson, Ken Hatfield and Jerry Jones played on that team. [/QUOTE]

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