The Sickos Supremely Special and Strange 7-7 Seasons

March 11, 2024

Hello Sickos Substack readers, it's Master Spreadsheeter Kevin here. In doing the research for Sickos T.H.A.N.O.S., I had to pull every team that finished with an exactly .500 record since 1950. Some of these records have occurred fairly frequently; the most common T.H.A.N.O.S.-eligible record is 5-5, something 179 teams achieved during the time period. Some records were less common, such as 4-4-2 and 4-4-1, managed by only 11 and 27 teams, respectively. The record that stood out to me above the rest, however, was 7-7.

A team going 7-7 stands out first and foremost because the most games the NCAA has ever allowed in a standard regular season is twelve, so playing fourteen in a season is something only a relatively few teams each season manage. Adding to the difficulty of going .500 in a 14-game season is the fact that many of the ways of playing extra games in a season are based on performing well (bowl games), haven’t been around very long (12-game regular season, introduced in 2006), or both (conference championship games). Then these extra games need to have the right results to push a team up or down to that perfect .500 record. All of these factors have been combined only twelve times in the history of college football, shown here sorted by season point differential.

All of these teams played two, or sometimes three, extra games beyond what most of their peers were playing in a season, so here’s an explanation of how each of them got those extra games, ranked approximately by how weird the path was to get there. Here are all the teams and their associated point differential from their 7-7 Seasons.

Be Hawaii, Host a Bowl Game 

As far back as I could find digital copies of the NCAA rule books, both Hawaii and teams that travel to Hawaii have been allowed to play one more regular-season game than the standard maximum. From 2006 onward, this has allowed teams to play 13 games, with a bowl game making 14.

2016 Hawaii opened the season with a loss against Cal in Sydney, Australia. This didn’t net them an extra game, but as one of only four American college football games played in Australia, it needed to be mentioned. Seven days later, they were playing Michigan in the Big House. The Warriors beat UMass in Hawaii to finish the regular season 6-7 before hosting Middle Tennessee in the Hawaii Bowl. A rare bowl win for this list pushed them to 7-7.

Be Hawaii, Play in a Conference Without a Championship Game, Host a Bowl Game

2008 Hawaii went 7-6 in the regular season and finished tied for 2nd in the WAC before losing to Notre Dame in the Hawaii Bowl. The Warriors would have appeared in a theoretical WAC championship game due to regular-season wins over Louisiana Tech and Nevada, the two teams they finished tied with. However, the WAC only played a conference title game from 1996 to 1998, so 10-2 Boise State won the conference with the regular season title.

Reach the Conference Championship Game and Play a Bowl Game

The most common way of making it to 14 games on this list, at least by the number of teams that have pulled it off. I’ve ranked it ahead of Hawaii for strangeness due to the relative rarity of a 7-5, 6-6, or 5-7 team making a conference championship game, compared to Hawaii having the option for a 13th game baked into their schedule.

2021 Kent State visited No. 6 Texas A&M and No. 5 Iowa in the first 3 weeks of the season, before going 6-2 in conference, including wins over MAC West champions NIU and a 48-47 overtime victory over Miami (OH). The Golden Flashes then lost the rematch against NIU in the MAC title game and lost the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl to Wyoming.

2018 Pitt went 1-4 against ranked teams, including out-of-conference losses to No. 13 Penn State, No. 13 UCF, and No. 5 Notre Dame. The Panthers still went 6-2 in conference and won the ACC Coastal outright before losing to eventual national champions Clemson in the ACC championship. They finished the season with a 14-13 loss to Stanford in the Sun Bowl

2017 Akron went 6-2 in conference and won the MAC East outright. The MAC title game was a rematch with a Toledo team that beat them 22-17 in the regular season, but the Zips fared worse this time, losing 45-28. Akron ended the season with a loss to FAU in the Boca Raton Bowl.

2018 Louisiana went 2-2 out of conference, losing to No. 16 Mississippi State and No. 1 Alabama and beating Grambling State and New Mexico State at home. The Cajuns went 5-3 in conference, tied with Arkansas State for the Sun Belt West, and reached the conference title game on the back of a 47-43 regular season victory. The conference title game was a loss to App State for the second time that season, followed by a loss to Tulane in the Cure Bowl.

2010 SMU went 1-3 out of conference, beating Washington State at home and losing to TCU, Texas Tech, and Navy on the road. They went 6-2 in the conference, including a 21-18 win over a 10-2 Tulsa team, with whom they would split the Conference USA West division title. The Mustangs went to the conference title game on the strength of that regular-season win, where they lost to UCF. An Armed Forces Bowl loss to Army capped off their season. This team was also featured in our original Sickos THANOS article for achieving a near-perfect 1 point differential over the entire season.

2012 Georgia Tech’s out-of-conference schedule went as follows: 59-3 victory over Presbyterian at home, 49-28 loss to Middle Tennessee at home, 41-17 loss to BYU at home, 42-10 loss at No. 3 Georgia. Luckily for the Yellow Jackets, the conference slate went better, and they finished 5-3 and in a three-way tie with North Carolina and Miami atop the ACC Coastal. These three teams all went 1-1 in the mutual round-robin, but spared me further tiebreaker research because UNC was ineligible for the conference title due to NCAA sanctions and Miami was ineligible due to self-imposed sanctions. Georgia Tech would go on to lose the title game to Florida State, 21-15. A 21-7 defeat of USC in the Sun Bowl allowed the Jackets to join 2016 Hawaii as the only teams on this list to win a postseason game.

Get some help from Celestial Mechanics, Take the Hawaii Test, and Reach a Bowl Game

In 1999, the NCAA adopted an exception to the 11-game maximum schedule, as follows: 

“Twelve football contests shall be permissible during those years in which there are 14 Saturdays from the first permissible playing date through the last playing date in November.” 

- 2005-2006 NCAA Division I Manual, Bylaw 17.11.5.1

However, the NCAA would adopt a full-time 12-game schedule for Division I-A (now known as FBS) teams in 2006, so the Earth’s annual journey around the sun only lined up for this exemption to take effect in two seasons, 2002 and 2003.

2002 Cincinnati traveled to Hawaii for a one-point loss, and finished 7-6 in the regular season, including a 23-19 defeat at Ohio State, and won the Keg of Nails at Louisville. They finished the season at 7-6 (6-2 in conference) in a tie at the top of Conference USA with a 10-2 TCU team they beat in the season opener. A New Orleans Bowl loss to North Texas closed out the 7-7 season. (A conference title game would’ve added a 15th game to the Bearcats’ schedule, but luckily for their inclusion in this list, CUSA wouldn’t add a title game until 2005.)

Get some help from Celestial Mechanics; the NCAA Just Saying You Get an Extra Game, and Reach a Bowl Game

In addition to the 12th regular season game added by the calendar exemption explained above, the NCAA allowed certain “kickoff games” to be played as an extra game. I can’t find a specific NCAA bylaw allowing or ending these games, but they occurred most frequently from 1997 to 2002, with the last one being played in 2004. These neutral site games functioned much the same as the modern neutral site season openers played in NFL stadiums, except that they allowed an additional game to be added to a team’s schedule. In 2002, three teams were able to take advantage of both the calendar exemption and being scheduled for one of these kickoff games.

2002 Iowa State lost to No. 3 Florida State in Arrowhead Stadium in the Eddie Robinson Classic, a kickoff game played from 1997-2002. There doesn’t seem to be any consistent theme for the scheduling or location of these games, only that Arrowhead was the only true neutral site used in six editions of the game and that it always involved a ranked team beating an unranked one.

Participants, Results, and Locations of All Eddie Robinson Classics, from Wikipedia

From there, the Cyclones rattled off six straight wins, including a 36-31 victory over Iowa in Kinnick (Iowa State’s fifth in a row, their longest win streak in the series), and a 36-14 drubbing of No. 20 Nebraska, who also appears on this list. The second half of the season was much crueler to the Cyclones, with losses to five ranked teams, a home loss to UConn, and a lone victory over Missouri. A 4-4 conference record was good for third in the Big 12 North, while 7-6 overall earned them a trip to Boise for the Humanitarian Bowl, where they lost 34-16 to Boise State.

2002 New Mexico opened the season by playing in the BCA (Black Coaches & Administrators) Classic against NC State, in NC State’s stadium. They lost 34–14. The rest of the season largely consisted of alternating wins and losses, with a 2-game losing streak to New Mexico State and Texas Tech and a 3-game winning streak against Utah, San Diego State, and BYU being the only breaks from the see-saw schedule. A 5-2 conference record was good enough for second in the Mountain West, behind a Bradlee Van Pelt led Colorado State team, but the conference didn’t play a title game until 2013. The Lobos ended their campaign with a Las Vegas Bowl loss to UCLA.

2002 Nebraska also played in a BCA Classic, just not the same one as New Mexico. 2002 was the only season in which more than one kickoff game was sponsored by the BCA, with the New Mexico game kicking first, followed by the Nebraska game.

Participants, Results, and Locations of All BCA Classics, from Wikipedia

The Huskers beat Arizona State 48-10 at home in Memorial Stadium in their edition of the BCA Classic, before hosting victories over Troy State (now Troy) and Utah State as well. Now ranked No. 8, Nebraska traveled to Beaver Stadium for a 40-7 loss to unranked Penn State, followed by a loss at No. 19 Iowa State. Conference wins over Missouri, Texas A&M, and Kansas, as well as I-AA McNeese State, closed out Nebraska’s 7-game win total. Losses to conference foes Oklahoma State, No. 7 Texas, No. 11 Kansas State, and No. 13 Colorado brought them to a conference record of 3-5, fourth in the Big 12 North. They then traveled to Shreveport to play Ole Miss in the Independence Bowl, a 23-27 defeat.

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