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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 4258619, member: 289"] 1971-72 [URL unfurl="true"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1971_NCAA_University_Division_football_rankings[/URL] [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_NCAA_University_Division_football_rankings"]1972 NCAA University Division football rankings - Wikipedia[/URL] [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.tiptop25.com/fixing1971.html[/URL] [URL unfurl="true"]http://www.tiptop25.com/fixing1972.html[/URL] I combined these two years as they are both walk-overs featuring two of the greatest teams of all time. Nebraska took over #1 in the polls after the first week in 1971 and ran the table, outscoring their opposition 507-104. In the final AP poll, they were #1, Oklahoma was #2, Colorado #3 and Alabama #4. The Cornhuskers played all three of those other teams, beating Oklahoma, (a team that was 11-0, 503-182 vs. its other opponents), in another “Game of the Century”, 35-31, Colorado, (9-1, 363-189 vs. teams other than Nebraska and Oklahoma), 31-7 and Alabama, (11-0, 362-84), 38-6 in the Orange Bowl. That’s a total of 104-44, an average margin of 20 points! Georgia was 9-0 when they played 8-0 Auburn and lost 20-35. Auburn was 9-0 when they lost to 10-0 Alabama 7-31. 11-0 Alabama then lost to 12-0 Nebraska 6-38. Georgia finished 11-1 and yet was 71 points worse that Nebraska! Nebraska-Oklahoma (Johnny Rodgers’ famous punt return is at 5:50): [MEDIA=youtube]JwWTbMv6qZM[/MEDIA] The Orange Bowl (Johnny does it again at 6:47): [URL="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pl1MiwS7eos"]1972 Orange Bowl #2 Alabama vs #1 Nebraska No Huddle[/URL] No doubt the Huskers remembered the 1966 Orange Bowl and the 967 Sugar Bowl, where the Tide had whipped their team. Oklahoma and Alabama had experimented with the wishbone offense Texas made famous in 1968-70 during the 1970 season and had struggled with it, going 7-4 and 65, respectively. They met in the 1970 Bluebonnet Bowl and played to a 24-24 tie. It was their only meeting of the decade because they were easily the top two programs the rest of that decade using that formation: [URL="https://stassen.com/cgi-bin/records/calc-wp.pl?start=1971&end=1979&rpct=30&min=5&se=on&by=Win+Pct"]I-A Winning Percentage 1971-1979[/URL] The next season the Huskers travelled to Los Angeles to play UCLA, bringing with them a 32 game unbeaten string and a 23 game unbeaten string along with two straight real-world national championships. Mark Harmon, (of NCIS), the UCLA quarterback re-called that “They were favored by about a million points.” But the Bruins won, 20-17 and Southern California moved to the top of the polls and stayed there the whole season, out-scoring 12 opponents, 467-134, including a 24-7 win over Harmon’s Bruins, a 45-23 rout of Notre Dame in which Anthony Davis scored 6 touchdowns and a 42-17 domination of Ohio State in a continuation of what became a long-standing Rose Bowl Rivalry, (the Buckeyes won in ’55 ’68 and ‘74, the Trojans in ’73, ’75, ’80 and ’85). USC didn’t dominate the Top 10 as the ’71 Nebraska team had but they played 7 teams with winning records and the only one to get withing 17 points of them was Stanford, whom they beat 30-21 and nobody else was undefeated so they had no challengers for the national title. [/QUOTE]

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