The 2024 NFL Draft and how Nick Saban changed college football
The levels of talent accumulation among the strongest programs is reaching new heights.
Who was the greatest college football team of all time?
That’s a fun question which will always generate a few different answers. I have my own answer to the question, which is the 2019 LSU Tigers. I’ve never seen a team challenge opponents like those Tigers did with their play style and skill.
For a long time, up until the 2019 Tigers, there was a pretty popular and near consensus answer to this question amongst college football media. They would say, the 2001 Miami Hurricanes.
Those Canes left a ton of wreckage in their wake, including a 37-14 beatdown of their long-time nemesis (usually their victim) Nebraska. I was a high schooler at the time who went to a friend’s house to watch the game and we ended up turning it off before halftime in favor of watching some sweet movie they’d recently rented and recommended called “the Rock.”
The case for Miami as the GOAT was always their talent pool. As an ACC Champion who drew a Nebraska team in the title who’d just had their doors blown off 62-36 by Colorado in the final regular season game, the list of defeated foes for Miami in 2001 just wasn’t what you’d want from your GOAT. It certainly wasn’t an SEC schedule. Their toughest challenge was a Virginia Tech team that didn’t even have Michael Vick and whom Miami only narrowly defeated 26-24.
Miami had unbelievable talent though and their depth chart was unlike anything we’d ever seen. The running back three-deep went Clinton Portis-Frank Gore-Willis McGahee with Najeh Davenport as their escorting fullback. If you’re a younger fan, all of those gentlemen would prove their talent level with illustrious NFL careers.
The whole team was stacked with NFL talent and they had 11 players selected in the draft after winning the title. They returned to the BCS National Championship in 2002 but were narrowly beaten by Ohio State. The following draft claimed another eight Hurricanes, many of whom had prominent roles on 2001 team. Again, this was considered unreal talent accumulation.
Well…things are changing. My own alma mater of Texas had a nice 2024 with 11 different Longhorns taken in the seven rounds. That’s the most of any year I could recall for Texas and surely the most since the NFL adopted its current seven-round format (there used to be like 20 rounds). I went back in time and found that the National Championship Texas Longhorns had six players taken in the following draft (2006) and then another seven players taken in the draft after that.
Quite a few although nothing to the 2001 Miami Hurricanes. But this year’s playoff team had 11! And there will be several more taken in 2025 from another Texas team that may not even win the National Championship or even make a deep playoff run.
So I went back in time and looked up how many players were drafted from all of our champions since the BCS established a National Championship Game:
As you can see, after a few years of playoff football, the talent level of the champions went up considerably in terms of draft-eligible talent. What’s going on?
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to America's War Game to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.