quote="Deep Purple"]
CalallenStang wrote:PonyTime wrote:One critical difference ... SMU was playing for the National Championship in that game. TCU is not.
Somewhat correct. Actually, SMU won the national championship be defeating TCU in Amon Carter Stadium. At that time, national titles were awarded before bowl games, which were considered "post-season exhibitions," thus rendering them useless from crowning a season's champion, at least as far as the polls were concerned. This tradition continued on for many, many years. A prominent later example is when Texas was awarded the national championship after beating Arkansas in 1969. They then went on to play their bowl game, national title in hand.
Somewhat correct. Actually, among the major ranking systems in 1935-36, the Williamson was the only one that issued a post-bowl ranking and factored in bowl results. SMU lost to Stanford in the Rose Bowl. TCU defeated LSU in the Sugar Bowl. In the final ranking of the 1935-36 season, Williamson had TCU at #1 and SMU at #2.[/quote]
Not quite froggie- we won the dickinson, which was the major poll at the time.
The earliest contemporaneous polls can be traced to Caspar Whitney, Charles Patterson and The Sun in 1901.[8] Thus the concept of polls and national champions predated the mathematical system, but Frank Dickinson's math system was the first to be widely popularized. His system named 10–0 Stanford the national champion of 1926, prior to their tie with Alabama in the Rose Bowl. A curious Knute Rockne, then coach of Notre Dame, had Dickinson backdate two seasons, which produced Notre Dame as the 1924 national champion and Dartmouth in 1925.
A number of other mathematical systems were born in the 1920s and 1930s and were the only organized methods selecting national champions until the Associated Press began polling sportswriters in 1936 to obtain rankings. Alan J. Gould, the creator of the AP Poll, named Minnesota, Princeton, and SMU tri-champions in 1935In power rankings - TCU #3 behind SMU and Stanford:
http://www.jhowell.net/cf/cf1935.htmLastly:
1935 LSU 9–2 Bernie Moore WS
Minnesota 8–0 Bernie Bierman BR, BS, CFRA, HAF, L, NCF, PS
Princeton 9–0 Fritz Crisler DuS
SMU 12–1 Matty Bell DiS, HS, SR
TCU 12–1 Dutch Meyer WS
where
DiS =Dickinson System 1924–1925, 1926–1940
HS =Houlgate System 1885, 1887–1905, 1907–1926, 1927–1949
SR =Sagarin Ratings 1919–1977, 1978–present
WS =Williamson System 1931, 1932–1963
Preponderance of the evidence - SMU National Champs 1935
Posted: Fri Dec 10, 2010 11:40 am
