The Best of the Decade for College Football

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Best program

USC: Two national titles, six conference titles. (No, USC fans, you didn't win seven...Washington State had the tiebreaker over you in 2002), six BCS bowl victories, have lost one nonconference game (by three points in the national title game) since the first month of the 2002 season.

Runner up

Oklahoma: One national title, six conference titles, seven BCS bowl berths, four BCS title games, seven top 10 finishes (plus a No. 11 finish).

Honorable mention

Florida and LSU: A combined 8-1 in BCS bowl games, including 4-0 in BCS title games. Oh yes, and they play each other every year.

Ohio State: One national title, four conference titles (PSU had the tiebreaker twice), seven BCS bowl berths, three BCS title game trips, four BCS bowl victories.

Best coach

Nick Saban: The only coach in the AP poll era to win national titles at multiple schools. Further, Saban accomplished the feat in four years at an LSU program that hadn't done anything notable in decades, and in three years at an Alabama program that had been paralyzed by scandal...two programs not only in the same conference, but in the same division of the SEC. And this was with taking two years off to coach the Miami Dolphins and with no coaching history or ties to the Southeast prior to taking the job.

Runner up

Pete Carroll: His run at USC is only surpassed by Bowden's 1987-2002 run at FSU and Osborne's three titles at Nebraska in the 1990s.

Honorable mention

Urban Meyer: Had Florida won the SEC title game, he'd be No. 1. The three are just that close. Meyer got it done at three schools: Bowling Green, Utah, and Florida.

It is debatable whether being the first BCS buster—and doing so before the new rules and bowl game were added to accommodate the non-AQ schools—or winning a 2006 title at Florida with a QB that didn't fit his offense (Chris Leak) and no viable starting tailback against a brutal schedule (11 bowl teams, including 12-1 Ohio State, 11-2 LSU, 11-2 Auburn, 10-4 Arkansas, 9-4 Georgia) was most impressive.

Mack Brown: Have to make room for this Jekyll and Hyde coach and program. The good: 3-1 in BCS games, a national title in the game of the decade with the player of the decade against the team of the decade, the only coach not to lose more than three games in a season. The bad: only two conference titles. Had Texas beaten Alabama, he'd be No. 1 on the list.

Best player

Vince Young: 30-2 as a starter, national title, first player to rush for 1000 yards and pass for 3000 yards in the same season, consecutive Rose Bowl game MVPs. The amazing thing is that Young would have had an even better career if given A) better WRs and B) an offensive scheme that fit his skills the first half of his career.

Honorable mention

Matt Leinart: Better overall record (37-2) and two national titles to one. However, Leinart benefited from better coaching and players around him. Also, Vince Young clearly outplayed Leinart—and Reggie Bush—in their national title game matchup on Leinart's own turf.

Darren McFadden: Rushed for nearly 2000 yards in back-to-back seasons on team with no passing game and a bad defense. Changed the game by popularizing the wildcat, out of which he was actually his team's most dangerous passer.

Best team (individual season)

Miami (2001): Not only was it clearly the most talented team of the decade (and probably of the '85 scholarship era) but they had only one close game all season, on the road against Boston College. That this loaded squad didn't win three national titles can be laid at the feet of Butch Davis and Larry Coker.

Honorable mention

Texas (2005): Let's just say that Texas only had two games that year where the margin of victory was less than three touchdowns.

Oklahoma (2000): The first team to win a national title with the spread offense, and they ran a 4-2-5 defense that gave people fits all year (except, strangely enough, Kansas State). Looking at their struggles in big games later on in the decade, they would have been better served abandoning the spread offense and keeping the 4-2-5 defense.

USC 2004: The best—if not the most talented—team of the best program this decade. Beat very strong Oklahoma, Virginia Tech, and Cal teams plus a pretty good Arizona State team.

Best player (individual season)

Vince Young (2005): Remember the Rose Bowl and his 267 passing yards and 200 rushing yards? It wasn't even his best game that season. There is no telling the numbers that he would have put up had he not been on the bench by the fourth quarter in all but two games that year.

Honorable mentions

Toby Gerhart (2009): 1871 yards and an amazing 27 TDs on a team with a bad defense and a redshirt freshman QB.

Tim Tebow (2007): Shattered Vince Young's 2005 statistics and would have had even better numbers had it not been for injuries and a lack of a running game to keep defenses honest.

Roy Williams (2000): Made Oklahoma's 4-2-5 defense work.

Sean Taylor (2003): The late, great Miami safety.

Larry Fitzgerald (2003): The Pitt WR made Walt Harris seem like a good coach

Dwight Freeney (2001): The last great Syracuse product of the Pasqualoni era.

Elvis Dumeril (2005): Outstanding Louisville DE.

Ndamukong Suh (2009): The best season for a DT since Warren Sapp.

David Pollack (2002): Outstanding Georgia DE.

Joe Thomas (2006): Superlative Wisconsin offensive lineman.

Troy Polamalu (2002): One of the best in a great decade for safeties.

Best conference

The Southeastern Conference: Five national titles, 13-0 season by Auburn. 12-2 in BCS games with losses to 12-1 West Virginia and 13-0 Utah. Best overall bowl winning percentage.

Honorable mention

The Big 12 Conference: Two national titles, tied for second with the Pac-10. The most title game appearances (seven), and two champions with perfect seasons (Oklahoma 2000, Texas 2005).

The Pac-10 Conference: Plays the highest percentage of games against foes from the ranks of AQ schools and the stronger mid-majors, and has the best record in such games. The No. 2 winning percentage in BCS bowls to the SEC.

Most overrated

Let not this category offend you. In order to be overrated, one has to be quite good.

USC in 2003:  The Trojans played two ranked teams: 10-3 Washington State during the regular season and 10-3 Michigan in the bowl game. They also lost to unranked Cal. Easily the least accomplished national title team of the past 20 years.

USC in 2004: How can they be both on the most overrated list and one of the best teams of the decade list? Because many people falsely claim that USC was as dominant for all of 2004 as they were against Oklahoma. USC struggled not only against good Virginia Tech and Cal teams that year, but also against mediocre Stanford, UCLA, and Oregon State teams. There were three or four games in 2004 that USC very well could have lost.

The SEC: Again, what are they doing on this list? First, their nonconference schedule stinks and they don't do as well against the quality nonconference opponents that they do play in the regular season as they do in bowl games (for instance, they had a losing record against the Pac-10 in the regular season).

And with the exception of a couple of good years from Alabama and Auburn, "the SEC" was really Florida, LSU, and everybody else. The other programs—especially Georgia, Ole Miss, and South Carolina—recruit much better than they coach and play.

While the conference rightfully banded together after what was done to LSU and Auburn in 2003 and 2004 and nearly done to Florida in 2006, the "SEC, SEC" chant should not be carried into the next decade.

Jeff Tedford: Never has a coach and a program been so hyped for accomplishing so little. By my count, this program that the media makes into a perennial contender has exactly two victories against top 10 teams—USC in 2003 and Oregon in 2008—this decade.

ACC expansion: The media claimed that the new ACC would be a ratings and championship powerhouse in football and basketball, surpassing the SEC in the former and being the unquestioned leader in the latter. It turned out to be a huge disaster, benefiting only Virginia Tech in the ACC.

Strangely enough, it actually made the Big East a better, more exciting league with the additions of Cincinnati, Louisville, UConn, and South Florida while ridding itself of boring and limited Temple and Boston College, as well as perpetual bridesmaid Virginia Tech.

It could have been worse. Imagine how much worse the ACC would have been had their original expansion plans—which called for Syracuse instead of Virginia Tech—had gone through.

The mid-majors: Truthfully, Boise, Utah, TCU, BYU, etc. lose as many games against the big boys as they win. It is just that the media chooses to ignore the former and overhype the latter.

This is not to say that mid-majors cannot compete with the AQ teams. Evidence of this is not necessarily the 3-1 record of AQ teams in BCS games (especially since only Utah vs. Alabama was the only instance where the undefeated mid-major beat a top 10 team that finished with fewer than three losses), but actually more impressively the sustained success that Cincinnati, Louisville, UConn, and South Florida have had in the Big East (which includes Louisville's BCS bowl win, which came a couple of years after their leaving Conference USA).

It should be noted that the media has begun to increasingly champion the mid-majors as a response to their frustration over the SEC's dominance of the national title games in the latter half of the decade. Evidence of this is the fact that no one in the media mentioned Utah in the same breath as USC in 2004.

The playoff talk: No one wants a playoff when their team is playing for the national title, and yes, this includes USC and Pac-10 fans in 2004 and 2005.

Tim Tebow: He is on here only because people—not only fans, but the media—keep insisting on pretending as if he were the QB for Florida's 2006 national title team, or that he made so many big, critical plays that year that Chris Leak was nothing more than a caretaker where Tebow was the difference-maker.

The truth is that Tebow barely played in 2006. He averaged nine touches a game—two passes and seven rushes—and even that is deceptive; a lot of those were in garbage time.

For example, of the 21 passes that Tebow completed that year, 16 were against Central Florida and Western Carolina. Meanwhile, against Tennessee, Auburn, Georgia, South Carolina, FSU, and Arkansas—critical close games—Tebow didn't complete a pass.

A better comparison would be when Tebow had 850 yards in 2006 (475 of which came in blowouts against WCU, UCF, and Kentucky) but Trent Richardson had 877 for Alabama this season. Yes, even Tebow's three TD LSU game; two of the TDs were from the one-yard line and the third came after Florida was already leading by nine and Leak, Caldwell, and Harvin had driven from the Florida 34 to set Tebow up with a 2nd-and-1 on LSU's 35.

Jim Tressel and Bob Stoops bashers: Only USC, LSU, and Florida fans have any right to point fingers. Everybody else roots for a program that accomplished much less this decade. Yes, this means you too, Texas.

The spread offense: For all the hype, this offense only won a few big games in the last decade.

Further, many of those were when two spread teams were playing each other (i.e. the Oklahoma-Kansas State games in 2000, the Florida-Oklahoma 2008 national title game, the Vince Young-Troy Smith showdown in 2005) and/or their success was really not as much due to the spread offense itself as its advocates wish to believe (i.e. Florida in 2006, LSU in 2007, and Florida in 2008 primarily because of their great defenses and overall talent level). Then again, the Josh Heupel and Vince Young national titles were exceptions that prove the rule.