Odd that those teams are absent, while 1931, 1932 and 1938 made the list.

The omission of the 1953 team and the inclusion of 1953 Maryland rankles me considerably. ND should count 1953 among its national championships. We ended the regular season No. 2 and won at Oklahoma, the team that beat No. 1 Maryland in that year's Orange Bowl.

I also was surprised that the 1972 Southern Cal team missed the list. Their overall schedule wasn't that onerous, but they were particularly dominant, beating ND 45-23 and OSU 42-17 in the Rose Bowl (pulling away in the second half of close games in both). Many USC faithful consider that team their best of all time, better than the 2004 team.

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Note how many of those SEC teams on his list were all-white. The same, of course, is true of most of those pre-World War II teams, including ND.

Or did I miss them somewhere on there?

[snark]

And I don't think it's particularly worthwhile to try to arrive at a "perfect" formula using only scores. Actually, I think the entire project is better suited for big picture comparisons than year vs. year ones. In other words, using this data to talk about the strength of Alabama's last 100 years versus Notre Dame's last 100 years as a program would be more instructive than trying to convince anyone about where those respective programs' best ten teams should fall relative to one another as individual seasons.

On the 1989 v 1993 arguments, I've always thought that we deserved to be honored as champions in 1993 moreso than 1989, and that we deserved to be honored as the best team in college football in 1989 moreso than 1993. That might not make sense to everyone (or anyone?), but it makes perfect sense to me.

I actually agree with him. I thought Miami was the better team in '88 and ND was the better team in '89. Still, it it tough to knock a team that beat #4, #3, #2, and #1 at on point all in the same season. Three times, ND played the highest ranked "available" team (#1 Miami, #2 Southern Cal, and #3 WVa - Miami was #2, rematches are for losers).

ND was better than FSU in '93, however.

Seriously, it is an interesting list but it does seem SEC-heavy. I can't say I've ever seen that Ole Miss team ranked that high...seems odd to claim that a one-loss team is the greatest ever. There are also a couple one and two loss LSU teams ranked surprisingly high. I'm sure I missed it, but does he state what formula he uses?

Not exactly the definitive word on this subject, but my colleague Bill Connelly did all the research and development for a massive project that ranked every team over the last 100 years according to strength relative to era. The formula is pretty heavily weighted toward schedule strength and defensive dominance, and only uses final games scores.

He wrapped up the countdown today with the final top-20 here:
http://footballoutsiders.com/varsity-numbers/2010/top-100-college-football-teams-last-1...

Here are the others:
100-81: http://www.footballoutsiders.com/varsity-numbers/2010/vn-greatest-teams-last-100-years-...
80-61: http://www.footballoutsiders.com/varsity-numbers/2010/top-100-college-football-teams-la...
60-41: http://www.footballoutsiders.com/varsity-numbers/2010/top-100-college-football-teams-la...
40-21: http://www.footballoutsiders.com/varsity-numbers/2010/top-100-college-football-teams-la...

Notre Dame had 11 teams in the top 100 (second-most behind Alabama):
3. 1966 ND (9-0-1)
11. 1946 ND (8-0-1)
20. 1943 ND (9-1)
31. 1988 ND (12-0)* (ranked behind No. 25 '88 Miami)
37. 1930 ND (10-0)
71. 1931 ND (6-2-1)
77. 1973 ND (11-0)
85. 1932 ND (7-2)
89. 1989 ND (12-1)
95. 1977 ND (11-1)
99. 1938 ND (8-1)

*Interestingly, '88 ND ranked behind '88 Miami (No. 25); '93 ND ranked behind '93 FSU (No. 56), but '89 ND ranked ahead of '89 Miami (No. 91).

These kinds of lists are generally pretty silly exercises, and as Bill mentioned in his write-ups, a slight tweak in the formula likely would have shuffled most of the top 250 altogether (we're talking about 12,000 different teams). But the write-ups are pretty damn interesting, and the conversations in the comments have been pretty good as well. Bill will post a podcast with Beano Cook later this week, too.