'61 Alabama is NOT the Best College Football Team of All-Time

by Curtis
(MT)

I agree on the SEC being the toughest division top to bottom in college football and I can see your point on most of the other "bests" for the SEC, although I disagree with several.

However, to say that the best team of all time was the '61 AL one, is ridiculous. Your "facts" don't make sense, your claim they were the best defensive team in particular. This is simply not true based on the only thing that matters -wins/points.

Defense:
'59 MS '61 AL '46 ND
Pts Allowed 21 #1 25 24
Shutouts 8 #1 6 5
Avg Pts Allowed 1.91#1 2.27 2.67
Greatest Pts Allowed 7 7 6

In addition, MS's offense was also better than AL as they scored more points (350 vs 297) and had a larger avg margin of victory (29.91 vs 24.72). And, all this despite losing one game which they later avenged quite nicely. Clearly the best defensive team of all time was this '59 MS.

'61 AL isn't even in the top 20 overall since 1940. The top 3 teams in order are '95 NE, '71 NE, '44 ARMY. This is based on the following categories (I also filled in the numbers for these teams):

'95NE '71NE '44ARM '61AL
Winning % 547 568 550 478
Top 3 Best Opp % 865 889 714 656
Top 3 Worst Opp % 273 273 346 233
Power Ranking 941 985 959 952
Pts For 638 507 504 297
Top 2 Greatest Pts For 150 100 159 101
Avg Pts For 53 39 56 27
Pts Allowed 181 104 35 25
Shutouts 1 3 4 6
Avg Pts Allowed 15 8 4 2
Greatest Points Allowed 28 31 7 7
Top 2 Least Marg of Vic (MoV) 37 28 36 15
Avg MoV 38 31 52 25
Top 2 Least Pts Scored 72 65 50 19
Winning Streak 25 23 9 11
Championship Opp Rec 12-0 11-0 NA 8-2
Championship MoV 38 32 NA 7

It is very difficult to compare teams from different eras so it is essential to choose both offensive and defensive categories as well as combined. As you can see from this, the '61 AL team would have had no chance against the 3 best teams of all time.