alabamagrizzly said:
... Once again, like I said in my previous post, you cannot compare any of those other teams except the big 3 to us because non of them have come close to sustaining the success that we had to fall from. Most of the rest of them have seen “flash in the pan” success compared to us. Ok, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration but you should get my point. Our greatness was unparalleled by more then 98% of the current and former FCS teams out there.
I certainly agree that I might be doing “apples to oranges” in comparing some of those other programs to the Griz. For most teams, the off years experienced by UM football in the past 8-10 years would really be “no big deal.” But Griz fans have gotten use to much more.
Recall that you have to go back 1985 to record a second losing season for the Griz.
Think about that … thirty-three years! (Or “a third of a century,” which sounds more impressive
) Assuming our fan base more or less mirrors the general population in age distribution, that means 45% (nearly half) of the Griz fan base wasn’t even born the only other time UM football had a losing season.
In previous posts, I mentioned several top programs have had more losing seasons that that just in the last ten years. But let’s take the survey further back, still focused on teams that have won a 1-AA championship since … say 1995, when the Griz won. Because teams now sometimes play 12 games, I’ll include the breakeven 6-6 records when they show up.
Montana: One losing season since 1995, then going back 33 years, as noted above.
NDSU: A power in D-II football, with phenomenal success since moving to FCS. They had losing seasons in 2009 and 2002 (D-II). Before that, you have to go back to 1975 to find another losing season.
Eastern Washington: The Eagles have, of course, had a lot of recent success, and have recorded only three losing seasons since 1995. (That’s still two more than the Griz program during that period.) They have also had an amazing number of “barely winning” (6-5) seasons … seven in all.
James Madison: A strong program, but since 1995, the Dukes have had four losing and two (6-6) seasons.
Villanova: Another good program, but the Wildcats have had six losing seasons, including one year when they went 3-8.
Youngstown State: YSU had had six losing season since 1995, and several of their winning seasons were at 6-5.
Richmond: The Spiders have had eight losing seasons since 1995. That included four straight from 2001-2004, with two of those ending at 2-9.
Delaware: The Blue Hens have had seven losing and one (6-6) season since 1995.
The remaining champions since 1995 have all moved up. It’s difficult to compare their traditions, but here’s a try:
Appalachian State: The Mountaineers may be closest to the long-term 1-AA/FCS winning tradition of the Griz. App State did not have a losing season in FCS after 1993 (4-7), and you have to go back to 1984 to find another one.
Georgia Southern: The Eagles also have a long winning tradition, but they did have three losing seasons from 1996 thru 2009. They also had 6-5 seasons in 1994 and 2008.
Western Kentucky: They started having consistent winning seasons after 1995, winning the 1-AA Natty in 2002, and moving up to FBS in 2007. Before their winning stretch, however, they had five losing seasons in the period from 1990 thru 1995.
Marshall: The Thundering Herd is harder to figure and compare. They had winning records in the decade or so before they went FBS in 1997. However, before 1984, they had not had a winning season in twenty years. Clearly, that stretch started before the plane crash that wiped out the team in 1970.
Massachusetts: The Minutemen won the 1-AA championship in 2006, but had had five losing season from 1994 thru 2011. That last losing record was not a good basis to move up to FBS in 2012 … and their move up has proved disastrous.
Bottom line: Except for NDSU and App State, since about 1990-1995 all of these programs have had more, sometime many more, losing seasons than the Griz are used to. (NDSU is again the outlier because they built their winning tradition as a D-II program. Of course, they’ve made up for lost time since.) So 'bama-Griz is basically correct.
