College Football: The Key to Success Is to Be an Animal

Whether you growl, chomp, bark or roar, college football has always been won by the animals.

A football head coach ultimately wants his players to play like animals on the gridiron. But that metaphor is only half the story. The key to winning is not playing like an animal, it's the animal you're playing for. Animals have taken over college football (figuratively of course, actual animals haven't taken over, but the animal mascots have).

The last seven national champions have been animals (Elephant, Tiger, Gator and Longhorn). Actually, the last "human" to win a national championship was in 2004 with the USC Trojans' victory. The last human vs. human National Championship Game was in 1998, the first year of the BCS, with the Tennessee Volunteers vs. Florida State Seminoles. The last human vs. non-animal National Championship Game was in 2004 with the USC Trojans vs. Oklahoma Sooners.To clarify, non-animal mascot is anything that isn't an animal but also isn't a human being, much like the Stanford Tree or Oklahoma Sooners.

If the picture still looks fuzzy, take a look at this: When looking at the final rankings of the BCS, 20 out of the 25 teams were animals. The highest ranked human mascot was the Oklahoma State Cowboys at number three. And of the five BCS bowls, animal teams won three of them.

Let's take a look at College Football as a whole. Out of the 120 FBS teams, 74 teams are animals. Also, since 1896, 75 of the teams that have been crowned national champions were animals.

Is it more clear now? Look at the 2012 College Football Bowls. There are 35 college bowls overall. Teams with animal mascots won 23 of the 35 bowls. In addition, 15 of those 35 bowls were animal vs. animal games. Lastly, out of the possible 60 spots to fill the bowl games, 46 of those spots were animal teams.

It's simple: If you want to win in College Football, you have to be an animal.