The 50 greatest college football teams throughout history

15. Best college football teams of all-time: 1959 Syracuse

The Syracuse football team won their first bowl game in the year 1959 and it was their best team ever that ended up getting the job done in their 23-14 Cotton Bowl win over Texas.

Syracuse shut out five teams in the 1959 season and twice went two-games without letting up a point. They held a tough Kansas team to just 30 plays in a game through stellar offensive progress and time management and topped that fact with a defensive shutdown of Boston University, in which they held them to just 25 yards.

The Orange averaged 451 yards per game in the season thanks to some stellar work from five All-Americans like guard Roger Davis, who was a unanimous pick in ‘59. The Orange also had a stellar running back in Heisman-winner Ernie Davis, who will likely go down in history (thus far) as the greatest running back to never play in the NFL. Unfortunately, Davis died of leukemia before getting the chance, but still has his number retired by the Cleveland Browns.

The team was incredibly talented overall and brought Syracuse their first and only national championship in football, easily becoming the consensus national champion in an era where college football was growing an identity of its own, becoming an even more massive sensation than before, like it is to this day.

Though not a top-10 team on this list, head coach Ben Schwartzwalker’s “Orangemen” deserve a solid spot near the top of this list for their work in the 1959 season.