The college football season began its thing last night on the cable televisions, and I had just forced myself to learn a bunch of dumb Excel spreadsheet stuff because I have a sexual fantasy about being a sexually frustrated accountant who lives in a camper by the river, so rather than use this newfound knowledge to make like a monthly budget for my family or calculate how many minutes of guitar solos Jerry Garcia had compared to Bob Weir on Grateful Dead bootlegs from the '70s, I figured I'd just dork out on some college football, similar to the dorky Best and Worst lists during the year, which always seem to generate ghost comments from beyond where some dude who went to like Becker College or something will all of a sudden about nine months after the fact be like, "Yes, Becker is terrible, I was at that one game, I'm glad you know how terrible it is," but I never see the comments because it's buried amidst ancient spambot replies and about 300 posts into the past, which is hard to go back to with my fractured O.C.D. mind.
Anyways, what I did was tabulate up the overall W-L record of every team in the Bowl Championship Football Subdivision (or whatever the fuck they call Division IA now in marketing pretendery), and here will be a list of the top 14 teams with the best record over the past decade, and later today there will be a companion list of the worst 14, because every stupid thing on this earth has a perfect companion; I read that in the Bible, or my grandmother told me that, or something. Maybe it was at the beginning of a Lifetime channel movie I watched once while high, and then Meredith Baxter-Birney got domestic abused and had some sort of cancer and a missing child but it all came together in the end, because she had a perfect companion. Thus I'm big on companions. But here are your 14 bestest teams, if you go purely by the scientific factoid of winning percentage over the past ten seasons...
#1: BOISE STATE BRONCOS (114-16, .877 winning percentage) - Boise State is the perfect example of what is wrong with college football, both to their credit and their detriment. First, it is utter ridiculousness that a team that has had two undefeated seasons in the last five years against Division I competition should have to justify a chance to play for a National title. But the fact college football is run by a bunch of conmen corporate lobbyists and the bowl system means there is not, and probably won't be a playoff system. This means the little schools like Boise State won't get a chance, even if they are undefeated. They jumped to the Mountain West Conference, hoping to join up with fellow small conference powers Utah and TCU, but Utah bolted to the Pac-12, and TCU is sharing space with the Broncos for one year before joining the Big East (for whatever reason). It's still a step up for Boise State though, who has made their reputation in a lackluster conference. Seriously, when you see the list of crappy teams, like half of Boise State's old conference mates make up that list. Not to mention the complete bullshit of having blue turf and blue uniforms and how that's an unfair advantage, plus looks stupid as fuck. They've built their underdog reputation on a bully's philosophy, where the deck is stacked and you play weak ass opponents, so even though they play the "oh poor us, we deserve a chance against the big boys," they are using that same big boy cut every moral corner to achieve victory as the big fish in their little pond.
#2: OHIO STATE BUCKEYES (106-22, .828 winning percentage) - I'm not a big fan of power conferences running shit, but I enjoy SEC football for it's brutality and excitement, and I enjoy a good Pac-10 game for its different style of play. I even enjoy the classic Big 12 match-ups. But I cannot stand the Big Ten. It is slow and plodding and boring, both in uniforms and mentality and everything. Ohio State, for me, personifies that boring, outdated bullshit from yesteryear, that peppers their roster with half-witted gangsta dudes to try and pretend they are as good as the SEC. The thing I don't understand is this whole "trading gear for tattoos" scandal that SI exposed, which seemed to me a very non-scandal. Like I would expect that at every school. I would expect you could find dead bodies and raped women galore around Columbus, if you actually wanted to look around.
#3: TEXAS LONGHORNS (106-23, .822 winning percentage) - I have not felt the ju-ju of doing these blurbs so fuck actual commentary that cares about college football. I like Texas for some simple reasons, despite their famous pedigree (although I root against them whenever they have gay fantasy QBs like Colt McCoy or Chris Simms). They were the home to Ricky Williams, Cedric Benson, and Earl Campbell. Their fans do the sign of the devil, and because of this one time there was a picture of newly elected President George W. Bush doing the devil horns while wearing a ZZ Top hat. I thought that was pretty awesome. I mean, it would've been more awesome if he hadn't have been the fake figurehead to help fuck up this country entirely to prepare it for the end of the American Empire, but hey, ZZ Top is pretty awesome, so that makes up for it all.
#4: USC TROJANS (105-24, .814 winning percentage) - There is not a more despicable college athletics program than USC football. From the ugly red to the yellow trojan logo to the honorable tradition of not having names on the back of their jersey to the paid players who helped run Pete Carroll back into the NFL before the hammer fell on the post-Reggie Bush era. Whatever happened to Lendale White? That dude was awesome. I always thought he was like Ice Cube from Boyz-n-Tha-Hood, growed up and playing football. Also, it makes me sad all Samoan players - whom I tend to love - either end up playing at USC (if they like pussy) or BYU or Utah (if they like Mormon Jesus). Seems like we should be offering those people more choices in life by now.
#5: OKLAHOMA SOONERS (109-26, .807 winning percentage) - Oklahoma is a pretty depleted place, that I find it hard to believe one of the nation's best programs is there. Really, after the pilfering of the Big 12, which is back down to 10, after being the Big 8 forever, it's really just a case now of Texas & Oklahoma and their sorry little brothers. You feel kind of bad for the two of them, because they probably could just jump to somewhere else and the conference would crumble, but they didn't. And then Texas A&M snuck in the back door to the SEC, which also is funny, because now either Oklahoma or Texas could be that even numbered team to go to the SEC and leave the other one hanging. Or both could go. I really don't care; but Texas A&M vs. Arkansas showdowns seem more like big Southwest Conference games than SEC games. This means I'm old as fuck.
#6: TEXAS CHRISTIAN HORNED FROGS (98-27, .784 winning percentage) - TCU going to the Big East next year is the dumbest of all the geographically challenged team moves, especially considering the Big East is a pretty declining conference when it comes to football anyways, to the point if somebody cherry-picked West Virginia, there'd be pretty much nothing left. Plus, TCU is going to have to travel three of four states for every opponent possible in that conference. UConn/TCU showdowns just don't really do it for me on paper. I wish all the non-BCS conferences jumped into a regulation system like Euro soccer, and like the best 8 teams from all those lower conferences over the past two or three years would form a super little conference each year, and newly successful teams could move up or get dropped if they started sucking. Off the top of my head, I'm not sure how great even that would be, because it would be like BYU, TCU, Boise State, and I'm not really sure anybody else from the non-BCS conferences are that good. So I guess it's a stupid idea.
#7: LSU TIGERS (102-29, .779 winning percentage) - I like LSU. They have pretty uniforms, and I don't mind the fact that half their offense beat up some dude outside of a bar, because it was apparently over a girl, and also because I expect them to be thugged out because they are Lil Boosie's favorite football team. Lil Boosie will probably be the first rapper to end up getting executed for being a gangsta. And yet his voice sounds like a cartoon got hit in the nuts. But that's what happens in Louisiana - you set your own style, your style is not set for you by others. That's why LSU has always had such swagger.
#8: FLORIDA GATORS (98-32, .754 winning percentage) - Did Urban Meyer actually retire? I think he tried to once but then didn't and then maybe he did, but I don't know for sure. I do know that ever since that Ron Zoot dude (or whatever his name was) that every time a major college football team hires a coach that the retarded fan base doesn't like, somebody rushes onto godaddy to register the "firestupidcoach.com" domain and throw up an angry picture and start a message board. I have dabbled in message board culture, and it's a pretty decrepit underpit to America's cyber pop culture, but college football message boards, all about one team, man they are the worst. And there's one for EVERY team, even the worst ones. There are people on a Florida International football message board right now, being all pissed out about something completely inconsequential. Which ultimately that's what the internet's best at - making us emotional about some dumb shit that doesn't really matter.
#9: VIRGINIA TECH HOKIES (99-34, .744 winning percentage) - I always pull for in-state teams, and Tech has been the closest this state has ever gotten to competing for a national football championship at the top level in my lifetime. I was so geeked for that Virginia Tech/Florida State title game where the black Mike Vick was juking motherfuckers constantly. One time, I accidentally met Frank Beamer in a Starbucks. He was on a recruiting trip and right behind me in line and I thought it was him, but the dude was tiny as fuck. Then when he placed his order, I realized it was actually him because he had a big, gaudy ass championship ring of some sort on his finger. So when he came over to put sugar and cream in his coffee like me and like any god-fearing Southern man who knows that chai lattes and crap like that is a stepping stone towards anal sex, I told him that I had friends down in Blacksburg, and they really appreciated how he put the school on people's radar. He said thanks, and then I left thinking about how he exploits the raw athletic talent of wild, underprivileged negroes, and makes millions of dollars a year to do so, and I felt sad for this world, that something like that would be respected.
#10: UTAH UTES (92-32, .742 winning percentage) - Utah, much like Boise State, has thrived in a lesser conference. Now they be all up in the Pac-12, and I ain't gonna lie, I'm excited about Pac-10 football this year. I watched that Oregon/Oregon State game at the end of the year last year, and it was rivalry fury in effect, plus Oregon State had those pimp ass matte black helmets, and I think the Pac-12 did good, although I wouldn't have taken Colorado into my league, even though it matched the big state school philosophical blueprint. The Utes are still flying high from Urban Meyer's earlier building dynasties talents. Urban Meyer is the most brilliant man on earth. If I met him at a Starbucks, I would totally be like, "Hey Urban Meyer, let's make small talk because you are famous."
#11: GEORGIA BULLDOGS (96-34, .738 winning percentage) - Out of all the teams that made this list, Georgia surprised the most. I know they are good, but they've not been on top of the SEC outright at all, but I guess they are consistently near the top. Still though, they've not contended for a National title like other SEC heavyweights on this Bully List of the past decade. They do got some big, scary ass country boys - both black and white - down in Georgia though. I've been in some situations down that way, making trouble along back roads.
#12: AUBURN TIGERS (93-35, .727 winning percentage) - I find Auburn a boring and reprehensible football program. It was sad to see Cam Newton's bought and paid for services help them win the title last year. But I guess people in Alabama ain't got much except for overweight children, a barely functional literacy, and a dark sad future where they max out their credit cards at Wal-Mart Supercenters every year up until they get their Earned Income Credit refund when they tax return come in.
#13: OREGON DUCKS (89-37, .706 winning percentage) - The Ducks have more uniforms than some conferences have in their entire history. It is a running sports meme joke, but really, that doesn't get at the ridiculous stupidity of it all, being it comes from the Nike dude just trying to drum up merchandising anyways, and help tie it to his stupid alma mater. I am cool with where I graduated college, and I'd certainly give them some shine where there any reason for me to have shine of my own to give out to others, but I wouldn't try to force corporate marketing bullshit overload on folks to brainwash them into thinking my old school is the real deal. I might give them acid though and tell them how cool it was, being I sold a lot of acid while I was in college. Tripping acid too, not like concrete etching acid or body disappearing acid like Mexican drug cartels use or anything. In case you were wondering.
#14: WEST VIRGINIA MOUNTAINEERS (88-38, .698 winning percentage) - West Virginia is a consistently good football program that never really gets the love from the other power conferences, mostly because no one ever clamors for the prestigious West Virginia market, and there ain't no high profile recruiting going in there. But if you were wanting a solid program, they'd be your team. I was always disappointed the ACC didn't take West Virginia in instead of Boston College, because it makes more sense geographically and rivalry-wise, as the yearly West Virginia/Virginia Tech games used to be great. But college football ain't about making sense, it's about making money bro. (Yeah, I could've done "making dollars" but it was too obvious, plus made me think of DJ Quik, so now I just want to wrap this up so I can go listen to some DJ Quik real loud in the other room. So let's end this.)
#1: DUKE BLUE DEVILS (22-95, .188 winning percentage) - I was surprised to see Duke was the worst team in all the land over the past decade. I mean, I knew they were terrible. Steve Spurrier launched his coaching career pretty much by magically helping Duke win 5 games in a couple seasons in a row, which was considered amazing coaching upness at the time. Living in ACC country, near UVA, I understand that Duke is a special breed of lower echelon team, that when your own team start running neck and neck with the football Blue Devils, it's a major red flag that your program needs an adrenalin shot to get off of the life support its on that you may have let your guard down and not realized. Usually, there's one ACC coach fired every two years simply for the fact his team is not clearly better than Duke. Seriously. But I did not know they were the worst in the country, even more terrible than Sun Belt bottom feeders. It sort of shows you why Coach K is a worshipped false god at that little bastard university in Durham, and why he can do no wrong, even though the rest of us see him as the snake-souled weasel he truly is. But at Duke, they have nothing else athletically to feel anything unshameful about.
#2: EASTERN MICHIGAN EAGLES (26-91, .222 winning percentage) - The Mid-American Conference is a ragtag collection of directional state universities that tend to do battle on ESPN2 on mid-week showcases during the season. Even though it's one of the lower rated DI conferences, you still for whatever reason see a lot of their games on cable TV. Probably because it's like a Big Ten B-league, to sort of whet your appetite for the big boys on Saturdays. Midwestern people are weird. They play cornhole instead of horseshoes, and the land is flat and forever so that there's no hollers or hills to hide in, which instills in midwesterners a long, slow personality. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, it's just very alien to me, and I tend to want to fight people when I'm out there, because it's just weird. Then when I am riding home on the Greyhound after some small town has bought me a one-way bus ticket back to Virginia along with a threat to be arrested if I ever show my face in town limits again, I cross from Ohio into West Virginia and the land start to heave like a woman's breasts and I can let my breath out because I realize I am home, where people are like me, and I can be myself, and a bunch of ignorant assholes in cowboy boots won't try to force me to live within their socially confining norms.
*: WESTERN KENTUCKY HILLTOPPERS (11-37, .230 winning percentage) - The Hilltoppers didn't qualify to be an actual member of this Shit List because they've only been in DI for four years, after being a pretty successful Division IAA member for a long time. You subtract their initial 7-5 outing at this level, and their cumulative record is that much more embarrassing, with only four wins the past three years. And oddly enough, they are jumping into the Sun Belt Conference rather than the more appropriate Mid-American Conference, although if I were from Kentucky, I too would associate myself with the south and not the midwest. But the jump by a team like this that was good at one level to a higher level to not be good, but cash those whore-ish "come lose at our stadium" fill-in-the-gaps of the non-conference schedule games with power teams, I don't know... I don't quite see how that serves the student body.
#3: BUFFALO BULLS (30-89, .252 winning percentage) - Another MAC team, already. The funniest thing to me is that the Buffalo University moniker is Bulls, instead of Bills, and both teams are terrible. Somewhere in upstate New York, there are men who torture themselves by tailgating all day Saturday, drinking themselves to a violent stupor, and watching the Buffalo Bulls suck it up on the field, and then repeat the process on Sunday for the Bills. Upstate New York is a strange and terrible place. I have been there, and drank amongst them, and written cell phone numbers of fellow wayward travellers on the back of missing prostitute flyers outside of bus stations in a number of towns up there. In fact, Jerry Jukebox, I know you probably don't have internet access, nor would even know where to find this site if you did, but if you have somehow become internet savvy and google your street name, Raven Mack is still out there, bro. My post office box has changed from 569 to 270, but hit me up sometime. I still have the other half of that one thing. Hope you're good bro.
#4: ARMY BLACK KNIGHTS (31-88, .261 winning percentage) - The U.S. Army sucks. We are starting wars in Libya and Syria, to go along with Iraq and Afghanistan, with our internationalist creep into Africa just beginning, as Sudan and Somalia are right there for the fake terrorist threat taking as well. Did you know the alleged Libyan rebels are Al-Qaeda trained, and connected to both the CIA and MI6? Did you also know they are currently rounding up black people in Libya and putting them in internment camps? That's the rebels doing that, not Gaddhafi. Gaddhafi is actually a hero to the African people, and really to all of us, not the obscene terrorist he is made out to be. But how dare he want to use oil profits for anything other than corporate gain? That asshole!
#5: IDAHO VANDALS (32-88, .267 winning percentage) - Ahh, the meager Western Athletic Conference, home to a ragtag assortment of second-rate western state universities that apparently do not realize football is played with more than seven people at a time. Idaho has stormed out the gate with a loss last night to Bowling Green in a battle between lesser conference lesser teams, so it looks like more of the same in Idaho. As we start our parade through the WAC (four teams on this list of Division I's worst), it is mind-boggling that they could all be so terrible. Honestly though, I would rather a team called the Vandals be the good one from Idaho than the stupid Boise State Broncos.
#6: UTAH STATE AGGIES (31-85, .267 winning percentage) - The Aggies are another WAC bottom feeder, which I guess has so many bottom feeders they can't technically all be on the bottom. I have nothing negative to say about Utah State though, because that's where my boy Chris Cooley of the Washington Redskins came from. Simply because he is a straight shooting solid bro, I can only assume this is a straight shooting solid school. So they get a pass.
#7: VANDERBILT COMMODORES (33-85, .280 winning percentage) - Do Duke and Vanderbilt play every year, as the only school still trying to maintain academic integrity in a southern football conference? Because if not, they should. I guess you'd have to throw Northwestern into that mix as well. The funny thing is, when you figure in the fact that half of the SEC made up up this morning's best teams list, and you subtract the Commodores' conference record, they're probably an almost above-average football team. But the SEC is brutal. I have always been for a playoff system, and one that only allows no more than two teams from any one conference, because I think the great fallacy with the NCAA tournament in basketball is that the 5th or 6th best team in a major conference is somehow automatically more deserving than the best team in a shitty conference. But man, when you watch SEC games on TV week in and week out, that's a tough fucking row to hoe. LSU is a national title contender to start the season, and has 7 of their games against preseason Top 25 teams. Vanderbilt, without even looking at their schedule, I guarantee plays at least four. Good luck Vandy, I hope you ruin somebody's decade.
#8: UNLV REBELS (35-83, .297 winning percentage) - A Mountain West team, in case you are like me and still basically jumble all WAC and MWC teams into one clusterfuck. It's our east coast bias. I cannot imagine anyone being a successful blue-chipper at UNLV for football, as the school's only a short city bus ride from the Sunset Strip, and I would imagine all sorts of sketchy activities galore being it is Las Vegas. Actually, if you've ever wandered off the tourist track in Vegas, and ended up near UNLV, it makes the national powerhouse basketball years even more questionable, not in a bad way, because I don't mind sketchy. And there's something inherently perfect about weird old Jerry Tarkanian and his collection of thuggish but loveable misfit players being the best, and probably circumventing NCAA rules or having illegal organized crime fingerprints somewhere on the program. I'm not trying to be libelous here, I'm just saying... And it's fine, because if you have to dabble in the criminal arts, I'd want somebody like Tark at the helm. He looks like he knows how to navigate a multitude of personalities.
#9: NEW MEXICO STATE AGGIES (36-85, .298 winning percentage) - Back to the whack WAC attack, with a second team named Aggies. Being they are both on this list, I somehow do not imagine the New Mexico State Aggies/Utah State Aggies fall interstate fall showdown for some sort of trophy like a bronze donkey or hunk of urethaned rock from Bryce Canyon is all that an extravagant affair. Although one can never tell, as the combination of higher education and heavy alcohol consumption can often magically create parties out of nothing.
#10: SMU MUSTANGS (38-82, .317 winning percentage) - As Miami struggles to excuse itself from transgressions with a snitch Ponzi schemer, SMU is often brought up as the last and only time a football team has gotten the death penalty. They've never recovered from it, and that was twenty years ago, so it literally was a death penalty. Although for whatever reason, as the Big 12 contemplates replacements for Texas A&M, SMU's name keeps coming up, which makes no sense. You already have a shitty B-level Texas school in Baylor; why would you add a second one?
#11: TEMPLE OWLS (38-80, .322 winning percentage) - Ahh, Temple, Division I's notoriously worst team for years, until Al Golden resurrected them from the dead. This is a Temple team that was bad the Big East said, "Yo, sorry bro, but you gotta go because you're fucking up everybody else's good time," and was relegated to the Mid-American Conference. But they've partially turned it around. I mean, they're not tearing anything up and having massive celebrations in the streets of Philly or anything, but they've had two winning seasons in a row, which is a big jump from just a few years back, where they had a 4-42 record over the course of four seasons.
#12: BAYLOR BEARS (39-79, .331 winning percentage) - Refer to #10 for more on Baylor. Anybody good in west Texas is still going to get pilfered by the Big 12 heavyweights like Texas and Oklahoma, and whatever crumbs fall through the cracks are going to be gobbled up by A&M and now even TCU. Baylor will always be fucked, and it serves them right for letting the feds torch all those innocent kids and women out at the Branch Davidian compound.
#13: SAN JOSE STATE SPARTANS (40-80, .333 winning percentage) - One final WAC team for you, and one that I did not even know existed. I'm not sure I've ever seen this team play before, but most of my college football awareness is from reading newspaper agate like an obsessed idiot savant on Sunday morning's when I was a preteen. Maybe this is a new school, created out of nowhere to serve a growing California population, and to further capitalize on the always booming industry of higher education, which is a money-grabbing scam like all other major industries you are made to believe you cannot live without.
#14: FLORIDA ATLANTIC OWLS (24-48, .333 winning percentage) - Florida Atlantic has only existed for the ten years that compile this record, and only the last six have been at the Division I level. You know, in the lower division lists which will go up beginning of next week, or maybe some tomorrow if I think about it, I made the cut off for eligibility be seven years. I must've had lesser standards when I made this one, because the Owls have only been in the Sun Belt for six. I guess Division I has lesser standards too though, if there is a Florida Atlantic/Florida International game most likely trying to include itself in rivalry week at the end of November.
