Jerry Claiborne came to College Park in 1972, inheriting a program that hadn’t posted a winning season in ten years and gone 9-33 over the previous five seasons. Claiborne made immediate improvement, going 5-5-1. In 1973, the Terps went to a bowl game. In 1974 and 1975, they won consecutive ACC championships. The 1976 Maryland […]
The University of Houston’s football program had operated as an independent for much of its history. Prior to the 1976 season, the old Southwest Conference, led up by Texas and Arkansas, opened its doors and let Houston in. The Cougars were anything but timid new arrivals. The 1976 Houston football team not only won a […]
Michigan had gone 38-3-3 the previous four regular seasons but never reached the Rose Bowl. The Big Ten did not allow runner-ups to go to bowls prior to 1975, so the previous year’s Orange Bowl—a loss to national champion Oklahoma—was the only postseason appearance for head coach Bo Schembechler since 1971. The only games the […]
The 1976 USC football team was one going through change. The Trojans were one of college football’s top programs under the leadership of John McKay. After taking over in 1960, McKay had a splendid 16-year run in Los Angeles that included three national championships. Now, he was off to coach the NFL’s new expansion franchise […]
In the eleven years since Vince Dooley came to Georgia, the proud Bulldog program had been successful, but were generally submerged behind Bear Bryant’s Alabama in the SEC. 1968 was Georgia’s last conference championship. The 1976 Georgia football team broke through and captured an outright league title. Georgia had, even by the standards of 1976, […]
Johnny Majors inherited a moribund Pitt Panthers program when he arrived in 1973. The Panthers last winning season was ten years ago. It didn’t take long for Majors to turn things around. He brought in a huge recruiting class in his first year and immediately began winning. Over the next three years, Pitt went 19-12-1 […]
Pepper Rodgers was in his third year as the head coach in Westwood. By this point, the football program was clearly working in the shadows of John Wooden’s legendary basketball program, who were merely fresh off their seventh straight NCAA title the previous March. The football Bruins were no slouch, but were after their first […]
USC has always, in varying degrees, played good football throughout the long history of its program. But the Trojans were never more dominant than under head coach John McKay. Arriving in Los Angeles in 1960, McKay won a national title by 1962. He won another one in 1967. A third championship came in 1972. The […]
Charles McClendon came to Baton Rouge in 1962 and inherited an LSU program that was thriving. The Tigers had won a national title as recently as 1958, with the legendary Billy Cannon in the backfield. That was part of a run where LSU finished in the national top 5 three times in four years. And […]
The glory days of Texas Longhorns football came when the great Darrel Royal was on the sidelines. Royal came to Austin in 1957. He won a national title in 1963. And by the late 1960s and early 1970s, the program was peaking. Another national championship came in 1969. The Longhorns won an outright league title […]
Legendary head coach Bobby Bowden was at the peak of his power when the 2000 season began. His Florida State program was on an amazing run of 13 consecutive seasons finishing in the national top five. They had won or shared the ACC title every year since joining the league in 1992. What’s more, Bowden […]
The University of Miami had become known as simply “The U” thanks to their dominance in the 1980s and the early 1990s. They won four national titles, and narrowly missed several others. They played with a swagger that made them a national brand. But the mid-1990s saw the ‘Canes slip, even to the point of […]