Ranking the best college football teams of every decade
ESPN PLUS $ MATERIAL1920s
1. USC (92.5 percentile, five top-five SP+ finishes, three No. 1s)
2. Notre Dame (87.2, four top-fives, one No. 1)
3. Alabama (85.8, four top-fives, one No. 1)
4. Texas (84.4, two top-fives)
5. Vanderbilt (84.2, one top-five)
6. Dartmouth (84.1, one top-five, one No. 1)
7. Michigan (84.1, three top-fives)
8. Nebraska (83.5, two top-fives)
9. Texas A&M (83.2, one top-five)
10. Army (82.9)
Other No. 1s: California, Cornell, Florida, Georgia Tech
College football's early decades were dominated by schools in what would become the Ivy League and the Western Conference (eventually the Big Ten). But in the 1920s, the South officially became obsessed, and California even joined in. Southern California fully committed to football over rugby after World War I and won its first Rose Bowl at the end of the 1922 season. Alabama broke through in 1925, not only scoring a surprising Rose Bowl bid (after a number of schools had turned it down) but upsetting Washington in the process.
By the end of the 1920s, Grantland Rice had discovered the wonders of waxing poetic about college football (and Notre Dame in particular), and the Carnegie Foundation had written a groundbreaking report warning about illegal recruiting inducements, threats to amateurism and schools' overt obsession with football. By the early 1930s, Alabama, Tennessee and others had come to realize they were far more invested in the sport (and had better resources) than some of their Southern Conference brethren and formed the Southeastern Conference. We were off and running.
Five best teams: 1921 Georgia Tech (98.3), 1923 Cornell (98.2), 1925 Dartmouth (98.0), 1929 USC (97.9), 1921 California (97.7)
John Heisman's Georgia Tech was the best program of the late 1910s, but he moved from Tech to Penn in 1920 -- he and his wife were divorcing, and he left town to avoid awkward social situations (as one does) -- and after one last hurrah in 1921, the Ramblin' Wreck's progress slowly slid under William Alexander.
Five best offenses: 1929 USC (99.8), 1923 Cornell (99.7), 1921 Georgia Tech (99.7), 1926 USC (99.6), 1920 Alabama (99.4)
In 1929, Notre Dame went 9-0 while scoring a total of 145 points. USC, meanwhile, scored 492, including 47 against Pitt in the Rose Bowl. That's enough to earn the top spot of the decade, even if the Trojans managed only 12 points against Notre Dame.
Five best defenses: 1925 Michigan (97.2), 1928 Illinois (97.1), 1929 Illinois (96.8), 1927 Illinois (96.7), 1920 Texas A&M (95.3)
Robert Zuppke's biggest accomplishment was introducing Red Grange to the world. But after Grange left to become one of the NFL's big early names, Zuppke's Fighting Illini went a combined 20-2-2 from 1927 to 1929 on the back of some ridiculous defenses.