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Message: [QUOTE="SWC75, post: 338250, member: 289"] In the beginning... SU History 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 [/QUOTE]

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