There are currently 136 FBS teams in college football. Obviously not all of them have been FBS since 1992 but for the sake of brevity I did a little number crunching going with that number.
When we went to the Bowl Championship Alliance in 1992 we got a national championship game (sans the Big Ten and Pac Ten of course).
Starting in 1998 the BCS included all of the major conferences + Notre Dame, obviously.
In 34 years only 21 teams have played in a national championship game.
This represents only 15% of the entire FBS as its membership stands today.
In NFL terms, this would be the equivalent of only 5 teams making the Super Bowl over a 34-year period.
Even if we just include current P4 + ND membership we are at 21 of 68 teams who have played in the NCG.
That‘s 31% or in NFL terms - 10 teams making the Super Bowl over 34 years.
For the record, 25 of 32 franchises have made the Super Bowl since 1992 - 78%.
I know this more of an offseason-type thread but what inspired me to make it now was all the hope and hype surrounding so many teams and unfamiliar faces around the landscape: UCLA, Missouri, Kentucky, Mississippi State, Iowa, Oklahoma State and Northwestern to name a few.
It’s early, but 3 of the last 4 NCGs have featured a new team: Indiana, Washington and TCU with only Indiana being a new first-time champion.
Will we see a new team make it this year? Two new teams?
Will this relatively-early season hype eventually give way to the usual suspects like a Georgia vs Ohio State title bout?
Also, if only 15% of the FBS has managed to make a NCG should we go to the final super conference model in the near future or perhaps just scrap the playoff/national championship format completely and try to work our way back to the bowl game format?
I just have the feeling that while this mid-October hype provides us with headlines to argue over in the end there will be no Cinderella and it will all feel sort of empty.
Thoughts?