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Flashback: Remembering 2007 and the wild numbers that helped launch SEC’s dominance
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Ten years ago, college football experienced one of the craziest seasons in the history of the sport. It began on the first week and carried on throughout the 2007 season.
Nationally, we saw a Top 5 team (Michigan) lose its season opener at home to an FCS opponent (Appalachian State). Notre Dame had a 43-game win streak over Navy snapped, the longest win streak for one team over another in FBS history.
An AP preseason No. 1 team (USC) lost as a 40-point favorite to Stanford, a team coming off a 1-11 season. And over a nine-week stretch, seven teams ranked No. 2 in the AP Poll lost.
But when all was said and done, the SEC ruled the FBS for a second consecutive season, as LSU won the national championship and Florida’s Tim Tebow captured the Heisman Trophy.
You remember LSU won the 2007 BCS national championship. You might have forgotten which team finished No. 2 in the final AP poll. Georgia.
Here’s an Inside-the-Numbers look at the SEC’s impact on the wild 2007 college football season:
LSU becomes first 2-loss national champion in modern era
The Tigers entered the season ranked No. 2 in the preseason and actually lost twice while ranked No. 1 in the AP Poll. Their two losses came in triple overtime and they entered the final week of the regular season ranked No. 7 in the BCS Standings.
But losses by the top two teams in the BCS Standings (Missouri and West Virginia), allowed LSU to jump up all the way to No. 2 and earn a spot in the BCS National Championship Game. The Tigers went on to dominate No. 1 Ohio State in the title game, 38-24, giving them their second national championship in five seasons.
Tim Tebow is first sophomore to win Heisman Trophy
Florida quarterback Tim Tebow helped the Gators to win a national championship in his freshman season of 2006. But in 2007, his first season as a starter, Tebow put up numbers never seen before in the SEC.
Tebow set SEC records for total offense (4,181 yards), TD responsible for (55) and rushing TD (23) in leading the Gators to a 9-4 record. Although his total offense and rushing TD records were eventually broken, his TD responsibility record still stands.
Although there was no national championship run for the Gators in 2007, Tebow’s performance made him the first sophomore to win the Heisman Trophy.
SEC has top 2 teams in final poll
The 2007 season marked the second consecutive year an SEC team won the national championship. But what is lost by many college football fans is the team that finished No. 2 in the final AP Poll – fellow SEC member Georgia.
The Bulldogs, in their seventh season under Mark Richt, went 11-2 in 2007, winning 10 of their final 11 games, including seven in a row to end the season. Although they didn’t play for an SEC or BCS national championship, the Bulldogs won the Sugar Bowl for the second time under Richt and finished with at least 10 wins for the fifth time in the last six seasons.
It all led to a No. 2 finish in the final AP Poll (and three first-place votes), the highest ranking to end a season for Georgia since winning the national championship in 1980. For the SEC, it was another feather in the cap for a conference that was establishing itself as the best football conference in the nation.
It marked the first time since 1971 that the top two teams in the final AP Poll came from the same conference. That year, it was Nebraska and Oklahoma out of the Big 8 finishing 1-2 (Note: fellow Big 8 rival Colorado actually finished No. 3 in the final poll).
Since 2007, there has been only one season that a single conference finished 1-2 in the final AP Poll – 2011.
Those two teams? Alabama and LSU.
The conference? SEC.
SEC also has top 2 players
While AP voters said the SEC had the top two teams in the nation, Heisman voters said the conference had the top two players in the nation as well.
While Florida’s Tim Tebow was a runaway choice as the 2007 Heisman Trophy winner, the runner-up was Arkansas running back Darren McFadden, his second consecutive runner-up Heisman finish. (He finished second to Troy Smith in 2006.)
It made the SEC the first conference since the Big 12 in 1998 to have the top-two finishers in the Heisman voting (Ricky Williams of Texas and Michael Bishop of Kansas State), and McFadden became the first player since North Carolina’s Charlie Justice in 1948-1949 to finish second in the Heisman voting in consecutive seasons.
Michael covers SEC football for Saturday Down South.
