7 college football fan bases living in the past

Admittedly, the Georgia Bulldogs are probably the closest to being off this dreaded list. If they can win the SEC again and make the College Football Playoff for the second time in five years, Georgia will be on that level with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Oklahoma Sooners. They would be perennial playoff contenders that are having a great time living in the present. Georgia is so close.

Then again, it has been a whole lot of no cigar for Dawg Nation since 1980. No team is more attached to a year than Georgia is to 1980. Until the Dawgs finally put it all together under head coach Kirby Smart, at least twice a fall going forward will any card-carrying member of this fan base will hunker down to his or her Dooley/Munson/Walker shrine in their basement and cry.

The Miami Hurricanes are somewhere in between Texas and Georgia on the Are We Back? scale. Miami may be ready to get to New Year’s Six bowls under third-year head coach Manny Diaz. For a hot minute there, we thought Diaz was about to make Miami football The U again in 2020. Too bad Clemson and the North Carolina Tar Heels beat the tar out of U in the regular season. Tough stuff.

Ultimately, Georgia’s present is better than Miami’s, but it is still clinging to a year 21 years before 2001. While Miami fans no longer have to watch Al Golden sweat through a dress shirt on fall Saturdays and lose, it is not like Dennis Erickson is coming through that door to coach the ‘Canes in the Orange Bowl again. Nevin Shapiro was a long time ago, but Michael Irvin was even longer.

The gap between No. 2 and No. 3 is about as deep and as wide as Lake Michigan. So there is no coincidence the Michigan Wolverines come in at No. 2. That has been the pole position they have held in their rivalry with the Ohio State Buckeyes for the better part of a generation now. One Jim Harbaugh hiring coupled with a weird five-year extension leaves us with no trips to Indianapolis.

Michigan has won one share of a national championship since World War II. I wish I could say more than that, but this speaks for itself. While they have great fans and one incredible stadium, this is a once-proud football program that could not even win a home game this past season. So if you like khaki pants, not developing quarterbacks and never going to Lucas Oil Stadium, well, here you go.

Do the Nebraska Cornhuskers regret leaving the Big 12 for the Big Ten? That would be a yes. Big Red used to dominate the old Big Eight and what the Big 12 used to be, you know, before they bolted to the Big Ten and wrecked their Texas-laden recruiting base in the process. Not even a clone of Tom Osborne is going to bring this former blue-blood program back. It is so, so sad.

To save themselves from one mistake after another, they hired former “national champion” head coach Scott Frost to fix the sunken ‘Huskers. Too bad he cannot even get to a freaking bowl game three years in. Sure, Frost and Nebraska fought so hard for Big Ten football to come back, but when they threatened to go rogue, commissioner Kevin Warren unleashed Ohio State on them.

So what we have learned today is there are varying levels of living in the past. We have bad (Florida State, Texas), sad (Tennessee, Georgia, Miami) and desperate (Michigan, Nebraska). At one point in time since the Jimmy Carter Administration have these seven iconic brands been champions, but for now, it is too good and too comfortable to forget about living in the past.

While some are more magnificent than others, these seven tend to live life in the rearview mirror.

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