Iowa's claimed national title

That blog post is 614 words long. 82 of them are salient:

Iowa boldly claims that they won a national title in 1958. Yes, a team that went 8-1-1 and and finished second in the two major polls behind an 11-0 LSU team is claiming they were in fact National Champions. This delusion stems from the Football Writer’s Association of America awarding Iowa their own National Championship trophy after the the bowl season in light of the Hawkeye’s decisive victory in the Rose Bowl. It appears that participation trophies did in fact predate millennials.
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Why write that today? Did the Iowegians make some claim about national titles recently?

 
knapplc said:
That blog post is 614 words long. 82 of them are salient:

Iowa boldly claims that they won a national title in 1958. Yes, a team that went 8-1-1 and and finished second in the two major polls behind an 11-0 LSU team is claiming they were in fact National Champions. This delusion stems from the Football Writer’s Association of America awarding Iowa their own National Championship trophy after the the bowl season in light of the Hawkeye’s decisive victory in the Rose Bowl. It appears that participation trophies did in fact predate millennials.
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Why write that today? Did the Iowegians make some claim about national titles recently?
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Its summer, so bored. Its HOT, so internet.

 
^^ And maybe a better claim than Michigan has to about 80% of their "championships." Seven of Michigan's titles came before real selectors were available and their 1997 "title" is basically a Big Ten/Pac-10 linterleague championship with a MASSIVE asterisk because Washington State wasn't allowed their final play.

 
knapplc said:
^^ And maybe a better claim than Michigan has to about 80% of their "championships." Seven of Michigan's titles came before real selectors were available and their 1997 "title" is basically a Big Ten/Pac-10 linterleague championship with a MASSIVE asterisk because Washington State wasn't allowed their final play.
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1995 Redux said:
Well......he's not wrong about that '97 title.
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Defense wins championships, They had the number one in the nation with an astounding average of giving up just 9.5 points a game. Hell Woodson was still a terror on defense till a couple years ago. So yes, he's wrong about that as well.....or is he?

Having said all this, that is what you will hear going to any Michigan forum and you will not change their minds and they will not change your minds, ever, because you are fanboys
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. My take on this, is that this was just another farce that occurs every year and calls itself a championship.The two teams never played so the point is totally moot and speculation is worth as much as the dirt on the bottom of a shoe.

Soap box time

My view is that there has never been a championship and that the NCAA failures continue to this day, though to a lesser degree. One day we might get a real championship but first the bowls have to go the way of the dodo, then we can talk about fields neutral to both teams and enlarging the playoff to 8-10 teams. At the pace NCAA football moves however, give it 30-50 years.

 
Defense does win championships. Michigan's defense was very good. Nebraska was 5th in total defense 12th in scoring and 3rd in rushing defense. 28th in pass defense 12th in scoring defense. Turnovers gained 24.

On offense Nebraska was 1st in rushing, 1st in scoring (scoring 1 more than twice the number of TD's as Michigan. Turnovers lost 21.

19th in punt returns 11.8 per return with one TD. Net punting 74th. Kickoff returns 24.3 with no TD's (7th)

Average margin of victory 30.2 pts.

Michigan was 1st in total and scoring and 5th in rushing, 1st in passing defense turnovers gained 26.

Michigan was 44th in scoring offense and 44th in total offense, 27th in rushing offense. turnovers lost 17.

Punt returns 8.2 yd/return with 1 TD. Net punting 78th. Kickoff returns 20.3 with no TD's (58th)

Average margin of victory 17 pts.

Opponents: Nebraska beat teams rated (AP) 2,3,14,17 at the time the game was played. They beat teams rated 7,8,18,20,23 in the final poll

Michigan beat teams rated 2,4,8,8,15,15,23 at the time the game was played, but 9,12,16 in the final poll.

So. Michigan had a slight to moderate edge in defense, a slight edge in Turnovers. Nebraska had a big edge in offense and a slight edge in kicking game.

Quality wins is argued both ways. I would argue that the final AP poll is a better gauge of who beat the better teams. Michigan vs. Nebraska would have been a great game, but I suspect Nebraska would be favored on a neutral site and (of course) I think the Huskers would have won. That being said, I have no problem with the split title.

 
So getting back to the toppic, how did Iowa claim one exactly? Seems to happen down south quite often of laate, Ok, Just read it, it has less credibility then something you hear from your tin hat wearing uncle, common, no one can take that seriously.

 
Brief off-topic: 16 may be a far stretch and it could be decades before it gets to that point. But, it very well could happen. About 20 percent of men's division one basketball programs make the NCAA tournament. 16 division one football programs would equate to about 12 percent.

Back on topic, I don't foresee Iowa ever winning a national title in today's game. Their recruiting can't keep up. Even Nebraska struggles with the current standards. Conference titles are a reasonable ceiling for Iowa, with perhaps a rare CFP appearance.

 
Enhance89 said:
Brief off-topic: 16 may be a far stretch and it could be decades before it gets to that point. But, it very well could happen. About 20 percent of men's division one basketball programs make the NCAA tournament. 16 division one football programs would equate to about 12 percent.

Back on topic, I don't foresee Iowa ever winning a national title in today's game. Their recruiting can't keep up. Even Nebraska struggles with the current standards. Conference titles are a reasonable ceiling for Iowa, with perhaps a rare CFP appearance.
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I feel like 16 is the magic number for the playoff. Give the teams 1 non-conference game a year. Play your 8 or 9 game conference schedule and your conference championship. With 16 teams it takes 4 wins to win a title which would put teams around the 15 game mark if they make the championship. Don't see how this isn't possible.

 
I think there's some hesitancy about expanding the number of teams too quickly, so it could take quite a long time before 16 teams is on the horizon. Eight teams doesn't even feel like a reality any time soon.

Perhaps one of the largest challenges is timing/scheduling. First, you'd have to either get rid of the non-con and/or completely restructure the regular season. Second, the playoff would become six weeks long - four weeks of games, a week off and then the championship game. If this were in place in 2017, the playoffs would start around Dec. 9th and not end until the week of Jan. 7th through the 13th. That takes up the entirety of finals preparation and finals week.

The cherry on the cake is continued restrictions from the NCAA in terms of overall practices, padded practices and constant hesitation to add more games to a schedule. I think there are a lot of variables to this and many of them don't have easy answers.

 
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