Blue Bloods: Who's In and Who's Out

The term Blue blood in this case is used commonly when people are discussing any institution or organization that has been established for a long time. Often these entities are fixed point organizational members who had provided a valuable contribution to the community or organisation. In many of the shows the Blue Bloods are assumed to be respected (or quite often hated) by other members of that group or organization.

College Football has been around since 1869 when Rutgers and Princeton faced off for the first time and as such has a class of teams that are generally accepted as Blue Bloods: The big six teams include; Michigan, Alabama, Notre Dame, Ohio State, Oklahoma, and USC. These 6 teams are part of the college football fraternity and the game would not be what it is today without these particular teams. There are other teams that some consider to be Blue Bloods (or these teams consider themselves to be Blue Bloods): Tennessee, Nebraska, Penn State, Miami, Texas. There are also teams that aren’t as widely considered to be Blue Bloods but based on their overall history maybe they should be: Florida, Florida state, Georgia, Clemson, and LSU.

Below, each of these groups will be examined to argue for or against each team’s integration into the Blue Blood category. The criteria that will be used: full body of work, AP Poll and Coaches’ Poll national championships, BCS/College Football Playoff, conference championships, Heisman Trophy winners, Consensus All-Americans, extended run of success, and regard across the sport. Those concepts that are after the year 1970 are given a higher value or weight than those before the year 1970 which is widely regarded as the start of the Modern College Football.

These are teams which are expected to always be referred to as Blue Bloods irrespective of the situations they face both on and off the football pitch.

Program: Michigan, The program boast’s of 1004 victories, 45 conference championships, 3 National Championships (AP-1948, 1997, 2023), 23 Bowl Wins,3 Heisman Trophy winners and 88 Consensus All-Americans. The Wolverines are a national team with their own helmets that any fan even those with low knowledge in football would easily identify.

Alabama

As of now the Crimson Tide has 965 wins making them the second most winning program in CFB history their 30 SEC Championships are first, 46 Bowl wins are first and they have 18 claimed national championships (13 if using our criteria) 4 Heisman Trophy winners and 86 Consensus All-Americans. Alabama has had arguably the two greatest coaches of all time on their sidelines: Two legends that have been closely associated with university of Alabama and sport of college football are Paul “Bear” Bryant and Nick Saban.

Notre Dame-948 total wins (4th), 21 Bowl wins, 7 Heisman Trophy winners, 11 self proclaims National Championship (8 of them based on the major polls), 109 according to the Consensus All-Americans. The Irish score high on tradition and perception: the Four Horsemen, Anthony Wayne, Touchdown Jesus, the Gold Dome (and helmets), and Rudy.

Ohio State

964 victories (third in the nation), 39 Conference Championships, 6 Heisman Trophy winners (7 Trophies Archie Griffin, two time winner), 26 Bowl victories, 9 National Championships, claimed 6 major polls, 93 Consensus All Americans. Since 1970 the buckeyes have not been a bad team they have averaged three or more losses per season sustain high standards of excellence.