Lucky #13

I watched with baited breath all week as ESPN.com's college football writers--really one of the best one-sport crews at the Worldwide Leader--unveiled their "Ladder 119" rankings. Where would Nebraska fit in this ranking of all 119 1-A teams over the past decade?

Ten years doesn't seem like much but, as Ivan Maisel notes here, no school has truly been dominant for that entire stretch. Texas had the best winning percentage at .778 but only one national title and one Big 12 title to show for it. Ohio State and Michigan also had better winning percentages than USC but the Trojans trumped them in terms of trophies.

So where does Nebraska rank? Thirteen and that's a tad higher than I thought they would be, but when you get into the numbers it feels about right.

They won the National Title in the first year of this study(?) and played for one again in '01. While we all know the program was slipping from a talent perspective under Frank Solich, his record rarely showed the true depth of the slide. In the years included here there are only the 7-7 and 5-6 seasons as true black eyes and we still have a higher winning percentage (.734) than #5 Oklahoma (.725).

I realize that this is a purely subjective ranking but maybe things aren't, or never were, as bad as we thought. It seems like nationally people still choose to believe in Nebraska football--albeit not as strongly as, say, 15 years ago--now it's time to take that choice back.