ESPN Crowning Another "Greatest"

[silverscreenselect]

I thought that I posted that the starting point of this exercise was 1936, when the first AP poll was taken.

I missed that and apologize, but that makes an exercise like this even more silly than it might otherwise be. I have no problem with picking teams of the decade or something like that but to arbitrarily choose 1936 as a starting point just because the AP poll started then introduces bias. That leaves out all the Notre Dame teams under Knute Rockne and penalizes other schools for the same reason.

[Jeemie]

I thought that I posted that the starting point of this exercise was 1936, when the first AP poll was taken.

I missed that and apologize, but that makes an exercise like this even more silly than it might otherwise be. I have no problem with picking teams of the decade or something like that but to arbitrarily choose 1936 as a starting point just because the AP poll started then introduces bias. That leaves out all the Notre Dame teams under Knute Rockne and penalizes other schools for the same reason.

The whole thing is silly.

Football has changed so much over the past 70 years that it's almost an entirely different sport today.

[ulysses5019]

I thought that I posted that the starting point of this exercise was 1936, when the first AP poll was taken.

I missed that and apologize, but that makes an exercise like this even more silly than it might otherwise be. I have no problem with picking teams of the decade or something like that but to arbitrarily choose 1936 as a starting point just because the AP poll started then introduces bias. That leaves out all the Notre Dame teams under Knute Rockne and penalizes other schools for the same reason.

I agree with this. USC had some pretty good teams under Howard Jones (the Thundering Herd) in the late 20's and early 30's.