How many Non-Elite Powers have won the NC in the past 25 years?

https://floridastate.forums.rivals.com/threads/how-many-non-elite-powers-have-won-the-nc-in-the-past-25-years.123864/

"College football's top schools are broken down into three groups by those Internet dorks like me that spend a lot of time on various message boards going all the way back to the halcyon days of the 1990s when rec.sport.football.college (RSFC) ruled the earth.

Those groups are:

• Blue Bloods - Notre Dame, Michigan, Ohio State, USC, Alabama, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas
• Near Bloods - Penn State, Tennessee, LSU, Georgia, Auburn
• New Bloods - FSU, Miami, Florida

These are the Sweet Sixteen of the College Football World. These are the "Elite" schools in college football.

For those that don't follow such things ... Blue Bloods all have one thing in common (UNTIL THIS VERY YEAR) and that is that they all must have the following things:

• Multiple National Championships
• Minimum of 800 wins (used to be 700 back in the 1990s)
• Winning Percentage of at least .700 (both Nebraska and USC fell to .699 after last season)

These are the Blue Bloods (National Championships -- Claimed / Post-1936 by AP or Coaches):

• Notre Dame -- .732 -- 892 -- 11 / 8
• Michigan -- .730 -- 925 -- 11 / 2
• Ohio State -- .722 -- 875 -- 8 / 6
• Oklahoma -- .720 -- 861 -- 7 / 7
• Alabama -- .718 -- 864 -- 16 / 11
• Texas -- .710 -- 866 -- 4 / 4
• USC -- .699 -- 813 -- 11 / 7
• Nebraska -- .699 -- 880 -- 5 / 5

These are the Near Bloods (just short of reaching Blue Blood Status):

• Penn State -- .685 -- 856 -- 2 titles in modern poll era
• Tennessee -- .680 -- 820 -- 2 titles in modern poll era
• LSU -- .650 -- 770 -- 3 titles in modern poll era
• Georgia -- .649 -- 787 -- 1 title in modern poll era (they claim 1942 as well)
• Auburn -- .629 -- 741 -- 2 titles in modern poll era

These are the New Bloods (Florida programs that took off after population explosion in '70s and '80s):

• Florida State -- .680 -- 522 -- 3 titles in modern poll era
• Florida -- .630 -- 701 -- 3 titles in modern poll era
• Miami -- .629 -- 596 -- 5 titles in modern poll era

One of these schools has won 27 of the 28 national championships awarded in the last 25 years.

Think about that! Only the Elites Powers seem to actually win the national championships.

Washington in 1991 (25 years ago!) is the only non-Elite Power to have won a national championship in the past 25 years. And no Non-Elite Power has won one in the past 24 years.

And Washington could argue that they are 17th on the list of all-time college football programs based on winning percentage and total wins. Arizona State ranks 17th in winning percentage while U-Dub is 18th, but the Sun Devils were a non-major conference school up until the '70s when they, along with Arizona, joined the Pac 8 to form the Pac 10. Arizona State was akin to a WAC school before that.

So U-Dub is actually right there in the "Sweet 17" all time.

Now look back 50 years ... going all the way back to 1966. Since that time there have only been a total of, including Washington again in 1991, seven Non-Elite Powers that have won a national championship. Obviously a lot of this time span didn't include the era of the New Bloods so it was kind of easier to win the titles.

• Michigan State (a former Power Program) shared the title with Notre Dame in 1966
• Pitt (a former Power Program) won the title in 1976
• Clemson won the title in 1981
• BYU won the title in 1984 (very controversial)
• Colorado and Georgia Tech (a former Power Program) shared the title in 1990

Only three schools without a major history of winning and winning big, Clemson, BYU and Colorado, have won a national title in the last 50 years. That's not counting the New Bloods, obviously, as these programs really just took off in the late-70s and early-80s.

The take away here ... expect for the Elite Powers to continue to win almost all of the national titles in the coming years. Oregon and Clemson have gotten close as of late, but they are the outliers here in the equation.

 

1 FSU91, 22 minutes ago "