Colin Cowherd Ranked College Football Teams Into 4 Tiers, Let’s Debate Them

Top tier football teams

Everyone loves to break things down into tiers. Top tier is the place to be. Whether we are talking about top tier talent in females, fraternity tiers, or tiers of college football teams, it’s just human nature to rank things as better than others. Colin Cowherd decided to rank college football teams into tiers by how good they are all-time.

Here is him talking about his tiers:

His top tier includes:

-Alabama
-Michigan
-Notre Dame
-Ohio State
-Oklahoma
-USC

Tier Two is:

-Auburn
-Florida State
-Miami
-Tennessee
-Texas

Tier Three is:

-Clemson
-Florida
-Georgia
-LSU
-Wisconsin

And finally, he only had one team in his tier 4: BYU. So essentially, he ranks BYU as the 17th best team all-time. Think about that.

His top tier teams are spot on. You won’t see any argument from me, or any sane college football fan who knows anything about the sport. Bama, Michigan, Ohio State, OU, Notre Dame, and USC have been powerhouses and when you think of winning football traditions, those schools come to mind.

Let’s take a look at the obvious glaring omissions from his list:

Penn State
Nebraska
UCLA

The AP poll made a list of the best teams all-time by ranking teams by how they’ve finished in the AP poll since 1936. Texas comes in at number 7, Nebraska at 8, Tennessee at 9, Penn State at 10, and LSU at 11. So tier two could be rearranged a little, but tier 3 is a mess.

Clemson and Wisconsin come in at 25 and 23, respectively, on AP’s list. Not only are they further down the list, but to say they are better all-time than the likes of PSU and Nebraska is stupid. You can taint Penn State’s image all you want with the Paterno scandal, but you can’t take away what they did on the field.

And BYU? Are you serious? BYU ranked number 60 on the AP list of all-time teams. That means that on average, since the AP poll began, 59 teams have finished better than BYU. That includes teams like SMU (thank you, Sherwood Blount), Duke, Army, Purdue, Kentucky, and Penn.

Colin is just trolling us as usual, right?

Image via YouTube

  1. Gotham Fratman

    To be fair, it sounded like he was just naming schools off the top of his head to support a different argument. Anyone who actually sits down and makes a list can’t keep out two of the top 10 winningest programs of all time in Nebraska and Penn State.

    9 years ago at 11:40 am
  2. HeyItsFratAlbert

    Miami won 5 championships, but also narrowly lost 2 others. They temporarily won then eventually lost the OT thriller to Ohio St in 2002 and a 14-10 loss to Penn State in 1986. In the modern desegregated era of college football, they are top tier.

    9 years ago at 11:54 am
    1. SirCarlosIII

      They have only been good (extremely good) for only 20 years, all of this while playing in the Big East and ACC, while having some of the shittiest fans and football tradition in all of CFB. They will always be Tier 2 on my book.

      9 years ago at 1:23 pm
      1. nolenation44

        90% of their fans end up either going to FIU or nowhere at all and will scream in your face about how good The U is while not even going to their games.

        9 years ago at 2:28 pm
      2. U.S.Grant

        But the ones who do go to Miami are still smarter than those Seminole fucks

        9 years ago at 4:15 pm
      3. HeyItsFratAlbert

        3 titles in the 1980’s. I know their fans suck, but that list is coming a different day.

        9 years ago at 2:55 pm
    1. Shut up Meg

      Fuck Notre Dame. Ruined the Bigeast and is the most overrated program in all of college sports. My god do i hate them. Go ahead lap me, but fuck them.

      9 years ago at 12:01 pm
  3. Austin_mule7

    University of Texas is a storied program. They have won Championship after Championship from the beginning of college football itself. A truly dominant program. By no means am I saying to take one of the other programs out of the top tier but how can he say that they barely make the second tier when they have just as much if not more success in college football history as some of the 1st tier teams

    9 years ago at 12:11 pm
    1. duckdog

      Never get a job in sales, because no one ever cares about the shit you’ve already sold.

      9 years ago at 1:04 pm
      1. Austin_mule7

        You dumb fuck this entire argument is about shit that has already happened

        9 years ago at 1:14 pm
  4. Cuntpunting

    BYU is just fucking inconsistent. They’re good one year, have two potential Heisman candidates on their roster, and then stumble and fall through the rest of their season after losing to a team like Utah State or Nevada. Big 12 would be better off with Houston. At least they may end up with Briles in a year or two.

    9 years ago at 12:11 pm
    1. SirCarlosIII

      I fell like BYU has wayyyy more tradition and history than UH. Both of them should be the clear favorites to join the Big12 though.

      9 years ago at 1:14 pm
    1. SirCarlosIII

      Learn your history. Auburn could claim at least 4 more championships using Bama standards. I honestly don’t want us to do that, but we have three Heismans, are top 10 when it comes to money and you should know how many tradition we have better than anyone else. Easily some of the most loyal fans in CFB, plus we have to deal with the SEC every single year, specially Bama and UGA. I’m obviously biased, but that’s just the way I feel.

      9 years ago at 1:18 pm