Comparing FSU Football stats to national champs last 30 seasons

FSU Football has sometimes been the top ranked team when it comes to offense or defense – sometimes, even better than the eventual champs.

It is rare in the world of college football to find the national champion each season be the top ranked team in the FBS when it comes to total offense or defense – heck, even the years that FSU football came out on top, they never once finished with the top ranking in either category despite coming close several times.

In fact, a break down of the stats when it comes to the FBS finds that the champion – for the most part – is good in one of the stats, but finds themselves in the middle of the road or sometimes even worse in the other one.

Take FSU football, for example: the three seasons that the Seminoles won the national title, the best finish they had statically was second in total offense during the 1993 season. That year, the Noles and defensive coordinator Mickey Andrews finished sixth in the nation in total defense.

During the 1999 title season, the Seminoles finished with the No. 12 ranked offense in the FBS level while having the No. 19 defense – and during the latest national title season in 2013, the Noles had the fourth ranked offense and the seventh ranked defense, joining just four other champs in the last 30 seasons in the top seven in both categories.

The other three? Well, it was the 1993 FSU football team mentioned above along with Nebraska Cornhusker teams from the 1994 and 1997 seasons.

That’s right -not even teams like the 1995 Cornhuskers, 2001 Miami Hurricanes, or 2004 USC Trojans (all three usually talked about among the best ever) were able to accomplish what two groups of Seminoles did.

A look at the last 30 seasons – from 1988 to 2017 with a total of 33 teams being crowned a champion over that span due to split titles – shows that FSU football more times than not has done better in at least one category. 13 of the seasons, the Seminoles have been better in one of them including seven of the last 15 seasons where someone other than FSU won.

Three times over that span, FSU football finished better in both categories than the team who won the title – 1991 Miami, who beat the Seminoles by one point, as well as 1998 Tennessee and 2000 Oklahoma teams that beat the Noles in the BCS championship game.

Next: Why 2000 was best FSU team not to win title in program history

Yes, I know there are no awards or championships for having accomplished these feats – but it goes to show just how dominant FSU football really has been over the last three decades.