College football fans get heated ranking the top 5 quarterbacks of all time

Who are the five greatest college football quarterbacks of all time? You think it’s an easy question but as fans learned, it’s cause for a great debate.

College football fans had a great debate on Thursday when PFF-College asked fans to name the top five college football quarterbacks of all time.

It is a difficult question to answer because quarterbacks in the last decade have benefitted from playing in a wide-open, spread style of offense more than anyone preceding them. It skews the stats when comparing players from today to even those at the turn of the century. Comparing numbers of today’s quarterbacks to the greats of eras of the past looks ugly for the predecessors.

Plus, some people choose to answer based on quarterbacks they’ve seen in their lifetime. Sorry, Roger Staubach and Davey O’Brien but you’re not going to appear on a lot of ballots on this list.

Many of the responses had a lot of similarities.

For example, many included former Florida Gators Heisman winner and two-time national champion Tim Tebow.

Many included Cam Newton based on his sensational lone season at Auburn when he shattered SEC records previously held by Tebow and won the Heisman and national championship.

Many of the recent Heisman winners and Heisman candidates populated a number of ballots.

Players from Lamar Jackson to Baker Mayfield to Marcus Mariota to Johnny Manziel to Andrew Luck and Deshaun Watson were among the names popping in the debate.

Vince Young, Matt Leinart and Michael Vick were among the quarterbacks nominated who played 15-20-ish years ago. There weren’t many selections for players earlier than that with the exception of a Dan Marino here or a John Elway there.

I was surprised I didn’t see more Peyton Manning, Danny Wuerffel, Drew Brees, Tommie Frazier entrants but then again, I know many of the people on Twitter weren’t alive in the 90s so it makes some sense why they have no sense of history.

But then what do you do for one-year standouts like Joe Burrow? He may have just had the greatest single-season of all time by a quarterback but does his entire career hold up with the competition?

How about Trevor Lawrence who set a freshman record with 30 touchdowns and led Clemson to a national title two years ago and led Clemson back to the title game as a sophomore. His career is unfinished but he’s on track to leave college as one of the best to ever do it.

The debate over the top five college football quarterbacks got heated as fans made their case:

My top five: Tebow, Newton, Jackson, Watson and Burrow

Who’s your top five?

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