The best football program of the 1980s won zero national titles in the 1980s

The 1980s may have been college football's strangest decade. Pick any reason you like.

1. After a run of blue-blood dominance in the 1970s, we had Georgia, Clemson, Penn State, Miami, and BYU winning national titles in consecutive years while Alabama, USC, Michigan, Ohio State, Nebraska and Oklahoma combined for one all decade.

2. A small private school in Coral Gables, which had finished in the AP top 10 just twice in the history of the poll before the 1980s, won three national titles in seven years and did so loudly, just as a usurper should.

3. The most consistently excellent program of the decade (Nebraska) didn't win a single national title, while a team that won two (Penn State), averaged out as the 13th-best team because it was either tremendous or wholly mediocre, with no in-between.

4. Of the 12 best individual teams of the decade (per Est. S&P+), one won the national title.

In the 1980s, we got mostly awful bowl pairings and non-conference schedules that weren't good enough to offset small, 6- or 7-game conference schedules that frequently missed pairing the best teams against each other. In 1980, Georgia beat one top-10 team while awesome Nebraska, Penn State, Florida State, and Pitt teams mauled each other. In 1983, Miami beat one. In 1984, BYU beat one (and that team, Pitt, ended up being incredibly mediocre). For all the glories we pile on the non-conference scheduling of yore, we get so many more top team-vs-top team matchups today, and the sport is better for it. Even if we still had the BCS, we would still be getting more elite-vs-elite games.

This democracy didn't seem to hurt the popularity of the product, however. The 1980s also saw more televised college football than ever before and more personality and controversy than ever before (Brian Bosworth, Miami's fatigues, etc.). It began with a super-human running back (Herschel Walker) and ended with a series of incredible battles between Miami, Notre Dame, and Florida State (plus the temporary death of a previously strong program in SMU).

All of the personality, drama, and general strangeness we associate with college football was of a particularly impressive vintage in the 1980s. That's the good part. The bad part is, a lot of the wrong teams probably claim rings.

50 Best Teams of the 1980s

The 1980s began with the same level of high-level dominance that we were used to seeing in the 1970s. Only, it came mostly from Penn State, Nebraska, and Pitt, and those teams all beat up on each other, opening the door for undefeated champions elsewhere. Then, as the decade progressed, the bar got a little bit lower. Regardless, this was a decade full of excellent teams losing games and very good teams not doing so.

National champions are highlighted below. You'll find only eight of them, as neither 1984 BYU (60th) nor 1980 Georgia (141st!!!) made the top 50.

The most underrated program of the decade might have been UCLA, which put a top-50 team on the field each year from 1985-88 and, as we see below, ranked eighth overall for the decade. Terry Donahue inherited a healthy program from Dick Vermeil in 1976, but he unleashed a run of consistent success that UCLA has never seen.

The "from the ashes" program of the decade: Colorado. The Buffaloes' average percentile rating from 1980-84 was 20.6, average ranking 96th.

Their average percentile rating from 1985-89: 76.6. Average ranking: 26th. They were 123rd in 1980 and fourth in 1989.

Ranking 1990s FBS programs by average S&P+ percentile rating

Since I got yelled at for weeks by Penn State fans on Twitter about the fact that the Nittany Lions were not in the top 10 here, let's walk through their decade, year by year.

1980: 10-2 | 8th in AP | 4th in Est. S&P+ (98.3% percentile)

1981: 10-2 | 3rd in AP | 1st in Est. S&P+ (99.6%)

1982: 11-1 | 1st in AP | 1st in Est. S&P+ (98.6%)

1983: 8-4-1 | unranked in AP | 20th in Est. S&P+ (83.1%)

1984: 6-5 | unranked in AP | 46th in Est. S&P+ (64.7%)

1985: 11-1 | 3rd in AP | 16th in Est. S&P+ (88.7%)

1986: 12-0 | 1st in AP | 3rd in Est. S&P+ (97.9%)

1987: 8-4 | unranked in AP | 27th in Est. S&P+ (71.0%)

1988: 5-6 | unranked in AP | 33rd in Est. S&P+ (68.3%)

1989: 8-3-1 | 15th in AP | 19th in Est. S&P+ (85.2%)

In the half-decade that was 1980-82 and 1985-86, PSU's average percentile rating was 96.6%, which, as you see, would have ranked first in the 1980s. But the other half-decade also counts, and the Nittany Lions' average was only 74.5% in 1983-84 and 1987-89, which would have ranked 22nd. Average all 10 years together, and you end up right in the middle at 13th.

Congrats on your titles, PSU fans. Now stop @ing me.