Perhaps no sport has given fans as many heated debates as college football. This is the game that tried to quantify abstract metrics like strength of schedule in order to explain the jockeying that happens in the various weekly polls. In fact, until it adopted a playoff system in 2014, even the team that was considered the national champion was a matter of opinion that often varied among several different sources every season.
And let’s not even bring up the BCS era.
But in the 150-plus years that college football has been played, some programs have singled themselves out as the elites. Here’s our ranking of the top programs in history, including Division I Football Bowl Subdivision and Football Championship Subdivision teams, based on factors including overall excellence and the impact they’ve left on the game.
