Kentucky digs up national football title

Published 7:25 am Sunday, July 31, 2016

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">This is what I love about college football in the summer.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The Kentucky Wildcats have been so preoccupied with basketball that they apparently won a college football national championship and yet it took 66 years for anybody, least of all them, to notice.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That’s right, 1950.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Who knew?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">You can look it up.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But, for 66 years, hardly a peep was heard about it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Actually, you can look it up now — if not then.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It was scarcely recognized at the time (January of 1951) and, besides, by the time the bowl season ended hoops had already started so nobody in the Bluegrass really paid much attention to it or gave a big hoot.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">What, they were expecting a parade?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Basketball coach Adolph Rupp needed their undivided attention at Memorial Gym.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But the other day the Wildcats opened an SEC-worthy, state-of-the-art football training facility (somehow it got past the basketball blue bloods) and needed some art work to fancy it up a bit.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That 2009 Liberty Bowl trophy just didn’t seem to fit the bill.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So they just whipped them up a national championship trophy.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Yes, in football. Kentucky, we’re talking about.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Why not?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It corrects a devastating oversight — somebody noticed that in 1950 every kid in America wasn’t guaranteed a trophy.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Or maybe …</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">OK. Actually it has something to do with the Sagarin ratings.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Kentucky can lay claim to the Sagarin ratings national championship of 1950.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">That much we know — now.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The flaw is that it didn’t exist at the time.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The Sagarin ratings, you see, rely heavily on computers, and in 1950 what few computers were available were several city blocks large and mostly preoccupied with fighting the so-called “Red Russian Menace” in the Cold War.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So it was 1978 before computers could sp</span><span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">are enough bytes for entertainment, and for Jeff Sagarin to harness that power into something really worthwhile to America, like ranking college football teams.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">His rankings have been a sort of curiosity piece ever since, a sideline staple of the game, although they later fell out of favor as one those “nonhuman” elements of the dastardly BCS formula.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It wasn’t until 1990, apparently, that the computer formula was properly field tested enough to revisit the Wildcats’ 1950 season and — voil?! — We are the champions.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So, if you’re keeping score at home, it was 28 years before the Wildcats’ national championship was mathematically possible, 40 years before it was discovered and 66 years before it was acknowledged.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But Kentucky still needed a trophy for its new football case, which was already getting dusty.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The Sagarin rankings, of course, d</span><span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">idn’t exist in 1950 so, sadly, there was no Sagarin trophy awarded at the time.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Nor was there a reliable artifact on hand to model one after.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So, Kentucky said, What the heck?, and made itself a mighty fine replica of the recent BCS crystal trophy, itself a bit outdated by now.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">I’m pretty sure the BCS also didn’t exist back in 1950.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Even I didn’t exist back then.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And I’m not sure where you get a spare BCS trophy to have a replica made. Who knows? Maybe they ordered one on eBay.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But it probably looks good in the trophy case.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">As you might imagine, this has opened Kentucky football up to much ridicule, probably most of it from the basketball wing of the university where the trophy case is full to bulging.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The rest of the SEC should be encouraged by this. It could be the first hint that Kentucky finally cares enough about football to start lying about it.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Auburn, for instance, toyed with the notion a couple of years ago of also doing some football archeology, threatening to dig up a few more national championships. Cooler heads prevailed.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Upon further review, however, that UK trophy isn’t quite so bogus as all the laughing hyenas might suggest.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">By most accounts — which is to say, the polls of the day — Oklahoma was your 1950 national champion.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The flaw there is that Kentucky beat Oklahoma 13-7 in the 1951 Sugar Bowl.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Kentucky’s lone loss that season was to Tennessee, so you had two 10-1 teams, one of which beat the other.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Yet Oklahoma is able to proudly display the 1950 national championship trophy while the ’Cats get mocked for theirs.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">And you thought the BCS system was bad?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">See, the sports writers who voted on the poll were even lazier back then than you think we are today. They couldn’t be bothered with another vote after the bowl season. So the final regular-season poll stood as the national championship. All the bowls were mere exhibitions.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">It wasn’t until 1968 that a poll was done after the polls (that old system would have come in very handy for LSU circa 2011).</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">So the Wildcats BCS-looking Sagarin trophy seems harmless enough, right?</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">Well, maybe not.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">This could have far-reaching implications for the SEC’s general welfare.</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">The UK head coach in 1950 was none other than Paul W. “Bear” Bryant (LSU’s future winningest all-time coach, Charles McClendon, was a player on the team, a tough-mugged end).</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyBody">But if Bryant can add another national championship to the six his disciples already claim, it means that, to catch or pass him, Nick Saban has to spend at least one more year at Alabama than the rest of the conference was hoping.</span>

<span class="R~sep~AZaphdingbatdot7pt">l</span>

<span style="font-weight: bold;" class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">Scooter Hobbs</span> <span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">covers LSU</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">athletics. Email him at</span>

<span class="R~sep~ACopyEditors~sep~endnote">shobbs@americanpress.com</span>

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<p class="p1">Follow Scooter Hobbs on Twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/ScooterAmPress"><span class="s1">twitter.com/ScooterAmPress</span></a>

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