The recent uptick in spread and high-tempo offenses in college football over the recent years has led a lot of people to believe that the game may be becoming too lopsided in the offenses favor. However, according to this one stat, there has only been one elite college football offense in the past 20 seasons.
Bill Connelly over at SB Nation took a look at the best college offenses throughout history using S&P+ rating, a stat that evaluates a team based on actual outputs versus expected outputs based on strength of schedule. The stat showed that only one offense has been ranked as "elite" since the start of the 1996 season: the 2005 USC Trojans.
You may remember that 2005 USC team with the high-octane Reggie Bush and Matt Leinart leading an offense that burned through every other team — except Texas — like a wildfire. However, not counting that loss to Texas in the most classic Rose Bowl game in recent history, the 2005 Trojans scored 600 points in the regular season, an average of 50 points per game. Chronologically, the Trojans were preceded on the list by the 1995 Nebraska Cornhuskers.
One shocking conclusion from the list? An SEC team has not been rated in this top offensive category since 1945, when Alabama put up one of the best offensive seasons of all time. In fact, Alabama is the only SEC school to find itself on this 23-team list, as the early-1900 LSU and Vanderbilt teams that also made the list were from before the SEC was formed.
The check out the entire list, you can click here.
