I thought this was interesting, because there's a lot of discussion about VT's chances of winning a football championship. List was edited from Wikipedia, and includes national poll champions prior to BCS and Alliance Bowls. I assumed that the national poll champions would be the same as BCS, but didn't check to make sure.
I also arbitrarily decided the modern era was 1973, because that's when D-1 split off and the 105 scholarship limit was established.
You could argue for 1978 (scholarships reduced to 95), 1984 (the year of the College Football Association lawsuit), or 1992 (scholarships reduced to 85). I said it was arbitrary.
Alabama 1973 (Coaches), 1978 (AP), 1979, 1992, 2009, 2011, 2012
Miami 1983, 1987, 1989, 1991 (AP), 2001
USC 1974 (Coaches), 1978 (Coaches), 2003 (AP), 2004 (AP)*
Oklahoma 1974 (AP), 1975, 1985, 2000
Notre Dame 1973 (AP), 1977, 1988
Nebraska 1994, 1995, 1997 (Coaches)
Florida 1996, 2006, 2008
Florida State 1993, 1999, 2013
Penn State 1982, 1986
LSU 2003 (Coaches), 2007
Ohio State 2002
Texas 2005
Auburn 2010
Michigan 1997 (AP)
Pittsburgh 1976
Tennessee 1998
BYU 1984
Clemson 1981
Colorado 1990 (AP)
Georgia 1980
Georgia Tech 1990 (Coaches)
Washington 1991 (Coaches)
Interestingly, only Pittsburgh would have been left off the list if you picked 1978 for the modern era.
If you picked 1984, leave off Pitt, BYU, Clemson, and Georgia.
Remove Notre Dame, Colorado, GT, and Washington if you pick 1992.
Comments
We want to see improvement over a year not the same old stale stuff we're seeing. Its been 3 years now and every year it gets a little worse and worse. This year we started off with a roman candle bang and then sat on the toilet for most the weeks wondering wtf happened.
A NC would be nice but lets get back to competing for the ACC, we can't even do that this year and last year was just as big of a mess but we were able to blame/hide that on new coaching staff.
2012 was when Frank realized there were serious issue with his staff, and cleared out the offense. 2013 was essentially a band-aid year, which pretty much resulted in the offense becoming the Logan Thomas show. This year, we've been decimated by injuries on both sides of the ball and the vast majority of our playmakers are freshmen. It's a rebuilding project, and it'll take time. We're not going to see a linear improvement from week to week, but as we get more talent into the program, we'll start seeing better results.
When did the Alliance Bowls start? Was that the same time that SEC added Miss St and Ole Miss?
That would be my modern era.
The Bowl Coalition, which was the precursor to Bowl Alliance started with the 92 season (already listed here as the start of the 85 scholarship season)
Bowl Alliance started with the 95 season, then BCS started in 98
I think this is important to keep in perspective.
Everyone wants to win the big one. Realistically, even programs like Alabama are being held to an impossible standard if their fans expect them to win or even play for the NC every season.
People aren't freaking out because we're not winning National Titles.
People are freaking out because we're currently the bottom feeding also-ran of the ACC Coastal with a 1-4 conference record who was the first team in the division eliminated from division title contention.
Honestly, I was specifically thinking of the Georgia fan board I checked out a while back when the Mark Richt rumors were flying around. Or Ohio State after they lost to us and wanted to fire everyone and drag Tressel back to columbus.
If Ohio State was 1-4 in the Big Ten right now, they would have already run Meyer out of Columbus.
Or he would have had a "medical" issue.
One or the other.
"People are freaking out because we're currently the bottom feeding also-ran of the ACC Coastal with a 1-4 conference record who was the first team in the division eliminated from division title contention."
...and losing recruits, year after year, to a UNC team that should not have a prayer of competing with us.
I don't know. Maybe this whole thing is going to come down to whether or not we are willing to cheat. Sucks, but that is where I am right now - so frustrated. There are seemingly not enough quality players that are willing to play just for a good education. In fact, it seems that is the LAST thing most are looking for in the deal.
Honestly, that wasn't the point of posting this, although I have seen a few people say that we should have a championship as a goal (and I think everyone agrees, but that's every program's goal. Just for most of them, like us, it's a high stretch goal).
French's comment just made me think - are we really punching above our weight class? So I just looked this up to see how much variation there was among teams. I don't have the statistical chops to even make sense of the info. But my feeling is that if it was essentially a statistical roll of the dice among, say, the top 30 schools over the last 41 years, then you could say we have underperformed, or at best been average. But it doesn't look that way to me, without doing the math. To me it looks like the deck is stacked, which I think is the gut feeling of most fans of schools not on that list. So I don't know what it means as far as judging our performance over the last 41 years.
One thing that I think would be interesting is to see how much the list changes if you add the teams that finished 2nd, or even top 4 (since that seems to be the bar now). And if it gets slow for me one day, I might do it.
I think the list would change significantly if you shift the "goal" even slightly to include "BCS Bowl wins" for lack of a better term. I think that's where the real frustration comes in, winning an MNC is tough, I think everyone realizes that. But there's other goals we never quite could deliver on either. We made it to a lot of those BCS bowls by winning weak conferences, the we would usually lose them. The only one post 1999 was the Orange Bowl against flipping Cincinnatti. Woo.
I think a lot of people immediately jump to the National Championship thing because it's way to argue against - winning a national championship is hard. But there's a level just below that that isn't as hard to get into... And we never quite got there. Given the resources and a that jazz I don't think winning a couple more BCS games should have been out of the question, or some of those bigger OOC games.
Shoot, if anything this year proved that you don't really have to be that good to win some of those bigger in conference OOC games.
In the past decade and a half, Virginia Tech has been a regional powerhouse that never could quite crack the national scene. It's fine, it is what it is, but after seeing some of the programs that were able to crack that national scene, I don't think that was too much to think we could do. Even given out resources and all that other stuff.
Good post. If I'm procrastinating sometime soon I might look up BCS bowl winners for the last 22 years. It would be interesting to see how much variation in teams there has been over that time.
Okay, here's a list for the Bowl Coalition
1992-93Teams
Orange#3 Florida State 27, #11 Nebraska 14
Fiesta#6 Syracuse 26, #10 Colorado 22
Cotton#5 Notre Dame 28, #4 Texas A&M 3
Sugar#2 Alabama 34, #1 Miami 13
Gator#14 Florida 27, #12 N.C. State 10
HancockBaylor 20, #22 Arizona 15
1993-94Teams
Orange#1 Florida State 18, #2 Nebraska 16
Fiesta#16 Arizona 29, #10 Miami 0
Cotton#4 Notre Dame 24, #8 Texas A&M 21
Sugar#8 Florida 41, #3 West Virginia 7
Gator#18 Alabama 24, #12 North Carolina 10
Hancock#19 Oklahoma 41, Texas Tech 10
1994-95Teams
Orange#1 Nebraska 24, #3 Miami 17
Fiesta#5 Colorado 41, Notre Dame 24
Cotton#21 Southern California 55, Texas Tech 14
Sugar#7 Florida State 23, #5 Florida 17
Gator*#24 Tennessee 45, #15 Virginia Tech 23
HancockTexas 35, #14 North Carolina 31
Rose#2 Penn State 38, #12 Oregon 20
The added teams are Syracuse, Texas A&M, Baylor, Arizona, West Virginia, Texas Tech, North Carolina, Oregon and NC State.
Notre Dame and Colorado could also be considered adds because they won championships before 1992.
Here's a list for Alliance Bowls:
1995-96Teams
Fiesta#1 Nebraska 62, #2 Florida 24
Orange#8 Florida State 31, #6 Notre Dame 26
Sugar#13 Virginia Tech 28, #9 Texas
1996-97Teams
Sugar#3 Florida 52, #1 Florida State 20
Fiesta#7 Penn State 38, #20 Texas 15
Orange#6 Nebraska 41, #10 Virginia Tech 21
Rose#4 Ohio State 20, #2 Arizona State 17
1997-98Teams
Orange#2 Nebraska 42, #3 Tennessee 17
Sugar#4 Florida State 31, #9 Ohio State 14
Fiesta#8 Kansas State 35, #14 Syracuse 18
Rose#1 Michigan 21, #8 Washington State 16
The added teams for these games are Arizona State , Kansas State and Washington State.
Here's the first 7 years of the BCS Bowls:
1999Teams
Sugar#4 Ohio State 24, #6 Texas A&M 14
Fiesta#1 Tennessee 23, #2 Florida State 16
Orange#8 Florida 31, #15 Syracuse 10
Rose#9 Wisconsin 38, #5 UCLA 31
2000Teams
Sugar#1 Florida State 46, #2 Virginia Tech 29
Fiesta#3 Nebraska 31, #5 Tennessee 21
Orange#8 Michigan 35, #4 Alabama 34 (OT)
Rose#7 Wisconsin 17, Stanford 9
2001Teams
Sugar#3 Miami 37, #7 Florida 20
Fiesta#6 Oregon State 41, #11 Notre Dame 9
Orange#1 Oklahoma 13, #2 Florida State 2
Rose#4 Washington 34, Purdue 24
2002Teams
Sugar#13 LSU 47, #8 Illinois 34
Fiesta#4 Oregon 38, #3 Colorado 16
Orange#5 Florida 56, #10 Maryland 23
Rose#1 Miami 37, #2 Nebraska 14
2003Teams
Sugar#3 Georgia 26, #14 Florida State 13
Fiesta#2 Ohio State 31, #1 Miami 24 (2OT)
Orange#4 USC 38, #5 Iowa 17
Rose#7 Oklahoma 34, #6 Washington State 14
2004Teams
Sugar#2 LSU 21, #1 Oklahoma 14
Fiesta#5 Ohio State 35, #10 Kansas State 28
Orange#9 Miami 16, #7 Florida State 14
Rose#3 USC 28, #4 Michigan 14
2005Teams
Sugar#3 Auburn 16, #8 Virginia Tech 13
Fiesta#6 Utah 35, #21 Pittsburgh 7
Orange#1 USC 55, #2 Oklahoma 19
Rose#4 Texas 38, #13 Michigan 37
The added teams are Wisconsin, UCLA, Stanford, Oregon State, Purdue, Maryland, Iowa, Utah, Pittsburgh.
List for the second 7 BCS Bowl games:
2006Teams
Sugar#11 West Virginia 38, Georgia 35
Fiesta#4 Ohio State 34, #6 Notre Dame 20
Orange#3 Penn St. 26, #22 Florida St. 23 (3 OT)
Rose#2 Texas 41, #1 USC 38
2007Teams
Champ.#2 Florida 41, #1 Ohio State 14
Fiesta#8 Boise St. 43, #10 Oklahoma 42 (OT)
Orange#6 Louisville 24, #14 Wake Forest 13
Rose#5 USC 32, #3 Michigan 18
Sugar#4 LSU 41, #11 Notre Dame 14
2008Teams
Champ.#2 LSU 38, #1 Ohio State 24
Fiesta#9 W. Virginia 48, #4 Oklahoma 28
Orange#8 Kansas 24, #3 Virginia Tech 21
Rose#7 USC 49, #13 Illinois 17
Sugar#5 Georgia 41, #10 Hawaii 10
2009Teams
Champ.#2 Florida 24, #1 Oklahoma 14
Fiesta#3 Texas 24, #10 Ohio State 21
Orange#19 Virginia Tech 20, #12 Cincinnati 7
Rose#5 USC 38, #8 Penn State 24
Sugar#6 Utah 31, #4 Alabama 17
2010Teams
Champ.#1 Alabama 37, #2 Texas 21
Fiesta#6 Boise State 17, #4 TCU 10
Orange#10 Iowa 24, #9 Georgia Tech 14
Rose#8 Ohio State 26, #7 Oregon 17
Sugar#5 Florida 51, #3 Cincinnati 24
2011Teams
Champ.#1 Auburn 22, #2 Oregon 19
Fiesta#7 Oklahoma 48, Connecticut 20
Orange#4 Stanford 40, #13 Virginia Tech 12
Rose#3 TCU 21, #5 Wisconsin 19
Sugar#6 Ohio State 31, #8 Arkansas 26
2012Teams
Champ.#2 Alabama 21, #1 LSU 0
Fiesta#3 Oklahoma State 41, #4 Stanford 38
Orange#23 West Virginia 70, #15 Clemson 33
Rose#5 Oregon 45, #10 Wisconsin 38
Sugar#13 Michigan 23, #11 Virginia Tech 20 (OT)
2013Teams
Champ.#2 Alabama 42, #1 Notre Dame 14
Fiesta#4 Oregon 35, #5 Kansas State 17
Orange#12 Florida State 31, #15 N. Illinois 10
Rose#6 Stanford 20, Wisconsin 14
Sugar#21 Louisville 33, #3 Florida 23
The added teams are Boise State, Wake Forest, WVU, Illinois, Hawaii, Cincinnati, TCU, GT, UConn, Arkansas, Oklahoma State, Clemson, Northern Illinois, Louisville, and VT.
One thing this has made me think is that the BCS changes to include non Power 5 conferences has opened up some chances for smaller schools, but hasn't allowed them sustained success. They rarely seem to show up in more than 1 or 2 of these larger bowls.