Last year I sent @kyleporterCBS some data on the “Best Worst” college football seasons over the past decade (https://pistolsfiringblog.com/a-look-at-the-best-worst-seasons-in-recent-college-football-history/) and he was kind enough to make a post out of it. I decided to update the data and move the “last decade” window from 2009-2018 to 2010-2019. This allowed teams whose worst record was in 2009 to move up and pushed a few teams down who had a disastrous 2019 campaign (looking at you, Stanford).
Key changes? Texas A&M and Washington move up to join the ranks of teams who have not had a losing record in the last decade and Stanford drops out. Of all P5 schools (plus Notre Dame, Boise State, and BYU), only 9 teams have maintained a winning record since 2010 - Alabama, Boise State, LSU, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Oklahoma State, Penn State, Texas A&M, and Washington.
Here’s the full list (click on image to view all rows):
Also, if I was a pessimist, I’d point out that yes we are up there, but our two worst seasons are more recent than some of the other punchers in our weight class.
As you can see in the table, Clemson’s 6-win season was 2010, so they will move up next year. And yes - join Alabama with 10-win seasons in 2011 and 2014 as their “worst”. Georgia will also move up, and their new worst will be 8 (in 2013 and 2016).
Tangential pet-peeve… using “lead” as as past tense verb form of lead instead of “led”. Anyone with me on that? Or have I shot our esprit de corps with a single comment?
The leading lead pencil company led the lead business conference by intentionally burying the lede on the most important lead pencil manufacturing process.
I know everyone has been on pins and needles waiting for this update (/s), so I decided to do a partial update on the “Best Worst Season” list comprehending the 2020 season. With the pandemic, everything is off with respect to game counts, statistics, etc. So I didn’t add or remove any programs. I did check to see which of the 16 programs whose “best worst” since 2010 was at least 6 wins to see how many were able to sustain at least a winning record last year.
You can see below that LSU, Penn State, Mississippi State, and Virginia Tech all had records that would have had them flirting with dropping down on this list. On the other hand, Alabama, Clemson, and Georgia’s worst records were all back in 2010, so they’d theoretically move “up” in the rankings if I were to formally update the list.
