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 […]
Bo Schembechler made an immediate splash upon his arrival in Ann Arbor in 1969—he upset #1 Ohio State and went to the Rose Bowl. In 1971, Bo returned to Pasadena. The 1973 Michigan football team again played Ohio State in a high-profile showdown with national title implications and a Rose Bowl bid at stake. The […]
Woody Hayes had been in Columbus for over two decades. He had national titles under his belt from 1954 and 1968. The 1973 Ohio State football team nearly gave him a third. Even coming up short, they still gave Woody his fourth Rose Bowl triumph. And along the way, they played one of the most […]
Joe Paterno came to Penn State in 1966. In 1968 and 1969, Paterno’s teams capped off undefeated seasons with major bowl victories. Both times, they came up short in the final national championship voting. The 1973 Penn State football season was more of the same—undefeated, but unrecognized. Although this time, they produced one of college […]
Bear Bryant had arrived in Tuscaloosa back in 1958. In his first eight seasons, he finished #1 in the AP poll three different times and had an unbeaten, but uncrowned team in 1966. He hadn’t been back on top since, but the 1973 Alabama football team came into the season with some momentum. They had […]
Ara Parseghian had come to Notre Dame in 1964 and immediately revived a program that had suffered through a miserable two-win campaign in 1963. Over Ara’s first seven seasons in South Bend, he finished in the national top 10 every year and won a national title in 1966. There was some slippage in 1971 and […]