I started doing this last year, and it was instantly one of those ideas I wish I'd come up with sooner.
The premise is simple: while the Associated Press and others attempt to rank the 25 best teams, here at FootballScoop we'll rank the 25 best seasons. There's no point in comparing New Mexico State with Alabama -- although one beat Auburn far more decisively than the other -- but we can learn a lot by comparing this New Mexico State team with all the others that preceded it.
When judging all 133 FBS teams against their own history, their own resources, their own goals, who fared the best in 2023?
25. Oklahoma State: Is Oklahoma State the nation's best bad team, or its worst good team? I think the answer is yes in either direction. The same team that lost 33-7 at home to South Alabama and that followed a monumental Bedlam win with a 45-3 no-show loss to UCF also managed to beat Oklahoma in the final scheduled Bedlam game and make a Big 12 Championship appearance that very few saw coming.
24. Toledo: The Rockets lost their opener, by two points, at Illinois, and didn't lose again until the MAC Championship. They'll enter 2024 as the 2-time defending MAC West champions.
23. Rutgers: Rutgers secured its first winning season and its first bowl victory since 2014 with a 31-24 Pinstripe Bowl win over Miami, which also happened to be the program's first win over its old Big East tormentor, ever.
22. Boise State: Don't compare this season with past Boise seasons. Compare it against what this Boise season could have been. Rather than wait until the offseason, AD Jeremiah Dickey replaced head coach Andy Avalos after Game 10 -- a 42-14 drubbing of New Mexico -- and under interim head coach Spencer Danielson, the Broncos won a de facto Mountain West semifinal game over Air Force, then hammered UNLV at their place to win the program's 21st conference title. Danielson was named the full-time head coach on Dec. 3.
21. UTSA: A rare example of a program moving 'up' a conference and still competing, the two-time Conference USA champions battled injuries all season and still closed their regular season playing defending AAC champion Tulane for the right to host the American Championship the following week. That game didn't go the Roadrunners' way, but they rebounded by handling Marshall for the first bowl win in program history.
20. James Madison: For the second year in a row, James Madison won the Sun Belt East on the field. And for the second year in a row, JMU was not allowed to compete in the Sun Belt Championship. They did manage to compete in the Armed Forces Bowl, but only due to a lack of 6-win teams elsewhere. The Dukes started 10-0, rose as high as No. 18 in the AP poll, and finished 11-2. At 19-4 as an FBS program, there will be no artificial limits on what JMU can achieve moving forward.
19. West Virginia: Neal Brown promised West Virginia wouldn't finish 14th in the 14-team Big 12 as predicted, as his team cashed that check. The Mountaineers made Pitt eat their own leavings, won six Big 12 games, and capped off a 9-4 season -- their best since 2016 -- with a 20-point win over North Carolina in Charlotte.
18. Miami of Ohio: So, the RedHawks did open the season losing to the Miami Bowl to the Hurricanes, and under my presidency they would be forced to change their name. That must be acknowledged. But Chuck Martin's team lost only one other regular season game, then avenged that loss by knocking off defending conference champ Toledo in the MAC Championship -- their first since 2019.
17. Georgia: Is this too low? Too high? I'm sympathetic to arguments in either direction. Here's something we can all agree on -- the standard is impossibly high when the overwhelming reaction to a 13-1 season capped by a 60-point bowl win is a shrug. If you're a Bulldog fan who thought a 3-peat was realistically impossible, this season went as well as one could've hoped. If you thought it was within Georgia's grasp, you'll spend the offseason lamenting the Brock Bowers ankle injury.
16. UNLV: First-year head coach Barry Odom had to replace the most important hire in his program -- offensive coordinator for a defensive-minded head coach -- six weeks into the job, and still had a wildly successful first season. Under coordinator Brennan Marion, the Rebels went from 76th to 22nd in scoring, and in the process improved from 5-7 to 9-5 and appeared in the MW Championship for the first time ever.
Look at it this way: Barry Odom won more games in his first season than Marcus Arroyo, Tony Sanchez, Bobby Hauck, Mike Sanford, Sr., John Robinson, Jeff Horton, Jim Strong, Wayne Nunnely, and Harvey Hyde won in any of their of their 41 combined seasons.
15. Oregon: It was a perfect season -- other than the two losses to their bitter rival. Oregon's 12 wins came by an average score of 46-13, including a 45-6 blowout of Liberty in the Fiesta Bowl that easily could have been 75-6. Washington's current team aside, I would place money on Oregon being the West Coast team most likely to thrive in the Big Ten. Dan Lanning is 0-3 against Washington and 22-2 against everyone else.
14. Alabama: The Tide's 57-game home non-conference winning streak snapped with the loss to Texas, and its 6-game College Football Playoff semifinal winning streak ended when Jalen Milroe went airborne on fourth down in overtime, but in between was one of the most satisfying seasons of the Nick Saban era. “As a coach you’re always trying to get your teams to improve and be the best they can be. I think this team probably improved from the South Florida game, the Texas game early in the season as much as any team I’ve ever coached," Saban said following the Michigan game.
13. Troy: What do Troy and Michigan have in common? There are 133 FBS teams, 129 of them in conferences, and the national title-bound Wolverines and these Trojans are the only to win back-to-back league championships. After a 1-2 start, Troy ripped off 10 consecutive victories, including a second straight blowout win in the Sun Belt Championship. The Trojans are 23-4 under Jon Sumrall.
12. Ole Miss: The Rebels committed the entirely forgivable sins of losing in Tuscaloosa and Athens, but were spotless elsewhere. The shootout win over LSU was one of the best games of the entire season, and the Peach Bowl win over a Penn State team that was supposed to be a mirror image of the Rebels tasted extra sweet. The first 11-win season in program history will earn Ole Miss its highest AP finish since 1969. The expectations for this team will be real in 2024.
11. Missouri: After three years of waiting, the breakthrough finally came in Year 4 under Eliah Drinkwitz. Missouri had one of college football's best offenses, pushed Georgia as hard as anyone in the regular season, then humiliated Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl. It's Mizzou's best season since 2013.
10. Arizona
Before his first game, I wrote about Jedd Fisch signaled to his fan base that the good old days were coming back again. Three years in, the good old days are coming back again. The Wildcats have gone from 1-11, to 5-7, to 10-3 with a bowl win over Oklahoma, a certain AP top-15 final ranking, and possibly the first AP top-10 finish since 1998. Good old days, indeed.
Arizona will carry the second-longest active winning streak in FBS and Big 12 championship expectations into 2024.
9. Texas
The Longhorns didn't beat Oklahoma and they lost their long-awaited College Football Playoff semifinal. So those were bummers. But everything else was pretty f'n great. The win at Alabama was monumental for multiple reasons -- it was the wind that pushed their ship onto the Playoff shores after 15 years in the ocean, and served notice that Texas must be taken seriously upon entering the SEC later this year. Texas defeated all four Big 12 teams they lost to last season, and left the conference with eternal scoreboard.
8. SMU
SMU secured a spot in the ACC the day before the season opener, and then went out and had its best season in 40 years. The Mustangs said farewell to the American with a perfect 9-0 record (their first outright conference title since 1984), saying farewell to the conference with a 26-14 win over defending champion Tulane in their stadium. Losses to Oklahoma, TCU and Boston College prevent SMU from being higher on the list.
7. Northwestern
If it was possible to bet on a team to win negative games, I would have made that bet on these Wildcats. Teams that suffer late off-season coaching changes don't fare well, and they certainly don't improve. But Northwestern was the most improved team in college football, rising from 1-11 to 8-5, closing the year on a 4-game winning streak
6. New Mexico State
If we are to use the point spread as a barometer for individual game performance, it's likely -- if not guaranteed -- that New Mexico State played the best game any FBS team did all season in their trip to Auburn. Not only did the Aggies defeat the mighty SEC Tigers by 21 points, they out-performed the spread by 46 points. The rest of the season was pretty good, too: the program's first 10-win season since 1960, a win over rival New Mexico in Albuquerque, and a berth in the Conference USA Championship.
5. Texas State
Texas State won back-to-back Division II national championships in the 1980s and reached the FCS semifinals in 2005. The program owns 14 conference championships. With all due respect to those teams, this was the best season in Bobcat football history -- or at least the most satisfying. A program that has strived to reach, and then be noticed, at the big-time finally did so in GJ Kinne's first season. Coming off a 4-8 campaign, the Bobcats beat Baylor in their 2023 opener and then reached, and won, their first bowl game, drubbing Rice 45-21 in SMU's home stadium. How's that for making some noise in the neighborhood?
4. Liberty
In a way, the Fiesta Bowl blowout loss to Oregon underscored just how good Liberty's season was. A team playing its sixth season in the FBS, its first in a conference and its first for a new coaching staff, won their way into a game in which their talent couldn't keep up. That's okay. That's progress. At 13-1 this season and 47-17 since 2019, Liberty is FBS's fastest-growing program.
3. Florida State
Florida State blew out LSU before a national TV audience on Labor Day Sunday to open the year, won at Clemson and Florida, secured its third straight victory over Miami, posted their first 13-0 start and their first ACC championship since 2014 and then... my records say the 'Noles season ended after beating Louisville in Charlotte? Can that be right?
In all seriousness, one of the greatest tragedies of the CFP committee's unprecedented, illogical, 11th-hour snub is that the first thing FSU players, coaches and fans will remember about 2023 will be Selection Sunday and everything that came after, but Sept. 3 through Dec. 2 was nearly perfect.
2. Washington
How many teams get to beat their archrival twice? Washington scored a thrilling mid-season win over Oregon, then looked even better in the encore. The Huskies went undefeated through the regular season, reached the College Football Playoff for the second time ever, won their first CFP game, and played for the program's first title since 1991. Penix, Odunze, Polk and McMillan joined 2019 LSU and 2020 Alabama in the pantheon of best modern-day passing attacks.
1. Michigan
A team as dominant as it was controversial. Connor Stalions is a name no one knew coming into the year, and a name no college football fan will ever forget. But this Michigan team will rest its block M ball cap on the fact that it played its best football after the Stalions scandal broke. Michigan beat Penn State and Ohio State without Jim Harbaugh, ran through Iowa, then took down the SEC and Pac-12 champions on its path to its first national championship since 1997. By my count, Michigan trailed twice all season.