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Looking back at the 5 worst losses by a national champion in the BCS/Playoff era
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There are good losses. There are bad losses.
Then there’s the kind of loss Alabama suffered 2 weeks ago.
Vanderbilt?
Sure, Diego Pavia is a dynamic talent. And at 4-2 at the midway point in the season, the Commodores are on pace for their first winning record since 2013.
But it’s still Vanderbilt.
In the old days – you know, back when only 4 teams made the College Football Playoff and there were no automatic bids – such a loss would all but disqualify a team from playing for the national championship.
Let alone winning it.
That’s all changed under the current system. An expanded field and the increased parity created by the cross-pollination of conference realignment has opened the Playoff door to more teams than ever. Including those with losses to Vanderbilt. Or Northern Illinois in the case of Notre Dame and Arizona in the case of Utah.
With half the regular season still to play, there’s a good chance a team will make it into this year’s Playoff with an even more glaring blemish on its record.
While we wait to see who that might be, here’s a look back at the 5 worst losses by a national champion in the BCS/Playoff era (1998-2023; keep in mind only 12 of those 26 national champions lost a game.):
5. 2003: Florida 19, LSU 7; Cal 34, USC 31 (3 OT)
The 2003 season produced the most recent split national champions.
LSU earned the official BCS title after beating Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl; Southern Cal was voted No. 1 in the AP poll after taking down Michigan in the Rose Bowl. It doesn’t matter which champion you prefer to recognize. They both suffered ugly losses on the road to their share of the title.
Nick Saban’s Tigers lost at home in Week 6 to a Florida team that went on to lose 5 times in Ron Zook’s next-to-last season coaching in Gainesville. While LSU was never in the game after taking an early 7-0 lead, at least Pete Carroll’s Trojans held out until the 3rd overtime before suffering their defeat in Week 4 at Berkeley. The Bears were quarterbacked that day by an unknown JUCO transfer named Aaron Rogers. But they were only 8-6 that season.
4. 2007: Kentucky 43, LSU 37 (3 OT)
The Tigers became the first (and so far only) 2-loss team to play for and win a national championship since the BCS was established in 1998. Both defeats came in triple overtime. And both – in Week 7 to Kentucky and the regular-season finale to Arkansas – came against teams that lost 5 times and finished at .500 or worse in the SEC.
Of the 2, the lost to Kentucky was by far the worst, although it might not have seemed like it at the time. Kentucky was 5-1 and ranked No. 17 when it took down the top-rated Tigers. But after rallying from a 27-14 deficit in the final 17 minutes of regulation to beat LSU, the Wildcats went 2-4 the rest of the way.
The 2007 season was a strange one in the SEC. The league was so balanced that both division winners finished with 2 losses. LSU won the West and beat East champion Tennessee for the conference crown to earn its national title shot against Ohio State.
3. 2014: Virginia Tech 35, Ohio State 21
The Hokies were already in decline by the time they arrived at the Horseshoe in Week 2. They’d lost 11 games in the previous 2 seasons and were on the way to a 7-6 overall record (3-5 in the ACC). But on this day, they provided Hall of Fame coach Frank Beamer with what might have been his last hurrah by using a dominating defense to beat the Buckeyes. The game was notable in that it marked JT Barrett’s first career start in place of an injured Braxton Miller. Jarrett struggled and was intercepted 3 times – including 1 by Donovan Riley, who returned his for a 63-yard touchdown.
Barrett rallied from the loss to lead OSU to 10 consecutive wins before suffering an injury of his own after running over a photographer in the regular-season finale against Michigan. Instead of scuttling the Buckeyes’ national championship hopes, Barrett’s injury helped spark the legend of Cardale Jones. The 3rd-stringer stepped in and was the catalyst for wins against Wisconsin in the Big Ten Championship Game, Alabama in the Sugar Bowl and Oregon in the inaugural Playoff final.
2. 2016: Pitt 43, Clemson 42
Remember Clemsoning?
That was the term used to describe the Tigers’ seemingly annual habit of losing a game they had no business losing. And there’s no better example of it than their 2016 loss to Pitt. The Panthers, who would finish the season at 7-5, came to Death Valley on a 2-game losing streak. But thanks to the running of James Conner and a defense that picked off Deshaun Watson 3 times, they were able to end Clemson’s bid for an undefeated season. It was also the Tigers’ last home loss for the next 40 games, a streak that spanned nearly 6 years.
Clemson, ranked No. 2 at the time, had several opportunities to put Pitt away. But instead of adding onto a 42-34 4th quarter lead, Saleem Brightwell picked Watson off to set up a Conner touchdown. Then with less than a minute remaining, Wayne Gallman was stopped short on a 4th-down run near midfield to set the stage for Chris Blewitt’s winning 48-yard field goal as time expired.
The loss, though disappointing, was only a temporary setback. The Tigers regrouped to beat Virginia Tech for the 2nd of their 6 straight ACC titles before going on to rout Ohio State in the Fiesta Bowl and beat Alabama in the national championship game.
1. 2008: Ole Miss 31, Florida 30
The Rebels limped into The Swamp having already lost to Wake Forest and everyone’s favorite doormat Vanderbilt, and were a 22-point underdog against the Tim Tebow-led Gators. Tebow threw for 319 yards and Percy Harvin accounted for 286 combined rushing and receiving yards in the game. But Ole Miss scored 17 unanswered points in the 3rd quarter to take charge and held on for an upset that appeared to knock Florida out of the national championship picture. The disappointing loss prompted Tebow to make what has come to be known as “The Promise” in his postgame comments.
“I promise you one thing,” he said. “A lot of good will come out of this. You have never seen any player in the entire country play as hard as I will play the rest of this season, and you’ll never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of this season.”
Tebow followed through on his vow. The Gators ran the table the rest of the way, including a 31-20 win against Alabama in the SEC Championship Game before beating No. 1 Oklahoma for the BCS title.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
