AP releases top heavy All-Time college team poll, Arizona Football ranked No. 54
The Associated Press released an all-time college football poll based on every program’s standing since the AP Poll was introduced in 1936, Arizona Football landed somewhere in the middle.
After surveying all 1,103 polls, eight Pac-12 Conference universities topped No. 54 Arizona.
USC was the top ranked Pac-12 school at No. 5, and UCLA (17), Washington (20), Colorado (27), Oregon (28), ASU (30), Stanford (32) and California (45) all clocked in ahead of the Wildcats.
Ohio State led the poll, which was accumulated based on a point formula that awarded one point to any single poll appearance, two points to a No. 1 ranking and ten points for an AP championship.
The natural feeling for Wildcats fans at this point of the article is probably one of disgust, anguish or bitter disbelief. How are there eight programs better than Arizona in the Pac-12 alone?
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The truth is, it doesn’t really matter. Once you venture outside the top 13 or so of the AP’s all-time poll, you start to lose value, and quickly.
The AP ranked Oklahoma as the No. 2 team. Notre Dame, Alabama, USC, Nebraska, Michigan, Texas, Florida State and Florida rounded out the top ten. LSU, Penn State, and Miami are next in line before the list continues to the middle echelon of the SEC with Tennessee, Georgia, and Auburn.
The system has its flaws: Alabama has a record ten national titles and ranks three spots below a team with half as many. Let’s explore how Arizona became to be the No. 54-ranked program since the AP Poll’s introduction.
The Wildcats had their fair share of excitement with Dick Tomey’s tenacious ‘Arizona Desert Swarm’ defense in the 1990’s. Arizona peaked in 1994 with a 29-0 Fiesta Bowl victory over Miami and finished a program-high No. 4 in the country after a 12-1 campaign in 1998.
The program’s resume of NFL players has to be duly noted, with the likes of Ricky Hunley, Lance Briggs, Tedy Bruschi, Chuck Cecil and of course, Rob Gronkowski, gracing the turf of Arizona Stadium.
Arizona’s lack of conference appearance bids to a major championship likely kept the Wildcats low on the all-time list. They remain the only team from the original Pac-10 never to have made a Rose Bowl, and they have never been ranked No. 1 in the AP Poll.
The talent is there. The end results, however, have rarely been in Arizona’s favor.
Whether you’re ranked No. 17 or 54, though, doesn’t mean much in the AP’s all-time poll.
The Bruins come in at No. 17, boasting just seven appearances at the top of the poll over an 80-year span and as the highest team not to win an AP national championship.
“This process that we used rewarded consistency and domination and excellence,” said AP college football writer Ralph Russo.
Explain, then, how that UCLA team is ranked just four slots lower than a program in Miami that has five national titles, dominated the game for the better part of a decade, appeared at the No. 1 ranking 67 times and made 367 poll appearances between 1980 and 2006.
I’m not one to argue with the numbers, but UCLA has no business landing within shouting distance of the Hurricanes.
You can make a legitimate argument that the Trojans don’t deserve a top-five slot. Washington, who has never finished as the AP champion and has either one or no poll appearances in 11 of the last 12 seasons, is certainly overrated.
Colorado (one AP title) and Oregon, who has made its name over the past decade, are justly squeezed into the top 30. ASU, whose last Rose Bowl victory came in 1987 and last bid came when Miles Simon was dancing Arizona to a basketball title, has a more than generous standing in the better third of football programs of all time.
It seems off that Stanford, a team with nine Rose Bowl bids and six victories since the AP Poll’s existence, is ranked lower than a mediocre-at-best Sun Devil program.
Next: Arizona football opens up Fall Camp
The AP all-time poll ignored a lot of success outside of national titles, which skewed the rankings and made them undeniably top-heavy. College football fans everywhere will just have to wait three more weeks for the next batch of AP rankings, which I’m sure will carry just as much controversy.
To view the entire AP Top 100, click here.