Scouts.com lists greatest college football programs of all-time

Scouts.com ranked college football’s all-time greatest using the Associated Press’s rankings. Despite taking a back seat to the BCS rankings the AP Poll was the top chart for a while and still relevant when analyzing college football throughout it’s history.

The AP Poll was first run in 1934 and remained relevant all the way up to the BCS era and has changed to adapt to the times as college football has evolved.

This is how Scouts came up with the list:

"Every time a team finished No. 1 in the final poll, it got 25 points. The No. 2 team got 24 points, No. 3 got 23 points, and so on with the No. 25 team getting one point.  Through the decades, the AP ranked the top ten teams for a few years before going back to the top 20 rankings, and eventually, it went to the top 25 system it’s at now."

Scouts points out that consistent production or rankings wasn’t rewarded as highly as brief flashes of brilliance.

"According to the scoring system, consistent production isn’t necessarily rewarded. For example, if a team finished 17th for four straight years, it would get a total of 36 points (No. 17 gets 9 points). A team that finished the beginning of the decade No. 2 (24 points) and the end of the decade ranked tenth (16 points), but wasn’t ranked any year in between, would get a total 40 points."

Scouts also says that when they first did this list in 2000, Notre Dame was on top but they’ve slipped down to #5.

Here is their list: