Stewart Mandel revisits his medieval college football pecking order and…well, duh.
Peasants: Arizona, Baylor, Cincinnati, Connecticut, Duke, Minnesota, Indiana, Iowa State, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisville, Mississippi State, North Carolina, Northwestern, Rutgers, Temple, USF, Wake Forest, Washington State and Vanderbilt.
What’s noticeable at the bottom of the football pecking order is how many good basketball schools there are. And by good, I mean bluest of the blue-bloods. Let’s eliminate those who have won men’s basketball championships (sorry, Baylor) and the two with very old football championships (Minnesota and yes, even mid-19th-century Rutgers).
Who’s left? Baylor, Iowa State, Mississippi State, Northwestern, Temple, USF, Wake Forest, Washington State, Vanderbilt. Five Four small private universities, one that didn’t play in Division I-A until the 21st century, one whose football team was so bad it got kicked out of the Big East, and the three poorest Little Brothers in the country. We should get together and sing “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life”.
EDIT: Temple is in that nebulous not-private-but-not-quite-public category that Penn State is in. So I swapped in a note about Temple’s unique awfulness.