By Woodrow Carroll
Winning the National college football championship 131 schools in theory have a shot at winning the big prize. Only a small number of college football programs have a realistic shot at ending up where Georgia has landed the past two seasons, the top dog, or, top bulldog, in the BCS (Bowl Championship Subdivision).
In the NCAA basketball ranks, there are a greater number of schools seeking the national championship. There are schools that do not have football programs, or, field football teams that will challenge the likes of Georgia, or Ohio State among other programs.
A quick word or two about Chicago Loyola:
Chicago Loyola University does field a club football team that is not about to receive much coverage.
The men’s basketball picture is a different story. The Chicago Loyola men’s basketball team has been on the scene for more than 100 years. The school certainly has made a name for itself among collegiate basketball aficionados.
The Ramblers were 1963 NCAA champions. More recently, Loyola reached the Final Four of the 2018 NCAA men’s tournament before falling to the University of Michigan.
In the need to know department: There are 32 men’s basketball conferences, along with two independents with a shot at the national championship won by Kansas last season. The two independent schools are the Chicago State Cougars and Hartford Hawks. Each basketball team started this week’ with a 4-16 record.
Think Big! Six of the major college basketball conferences lead off with word Big: Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, Big Sky, Big South, and Big West.
The Big Ten, Big 12 and Big East are conferences with basketball pedigrees. Each has more than one school with an NCAA tournament championship in the trophy case. The Big Sky, Big South and Big West have been shut out.
With one exception, the Big West Conference is made up of California schools. True, California is a large state surpassed in geographic size only by Alaska and Texas. Yet, with virtually all the conference competition in-state, the Big West would seem to have few headaches involving road games. The outlier, however, is Hawaii. Creative scheduling is needed.
Indiana University was the last men’s basketball team to go undefeated in capturing the men’s tournament championship with a 32-0 overall record in 1976. Going undefeated in conference play is becoming more difficult with each passing season for all schools.
Going into this week’s action nine of the 32 major-division conferences had an undefeated team at the top of the conference standings. Perhaps the most unusual is Eastern Washington.
The Eagles of Eastern Washington led the Big Sky Conference with an 8-0 record. Overall, Eastern Washington is only 14-8. so the Eagles were 6-8 in non-conference games.
In terms of name recognition, Alabama of the Southeastern Conference (SEC) stands out.
The Crimson Tide entered this week 17-2 overall and 7-0 in the SEC.
With each passing week, the ranks of undefeated conference teams will continue to decline.