The NCAA Football 07 Alternate History Saga Part 2: Pre-History or, The First Decade (2006-2015)
The first ten years of my college football alternate history, simulated without a created coach... did the SEC dominate like in real life? How does the Big East do in a world where it gets to live?
This is the story of a fictional college football universe, where a bunch of people’s names were swapped out for computer generation. Different teams were good in this universe than they were in real life. This is a collection of records and, eventually, narratives, from a long-running NCAA Football 07 dynasty project. Read Part 1, breaking down the framework and inspiration, here.
We begin our journey in 2006. I’m not sure what was technically the user-controlled team, but it was probably USC so that I could make sure they keep Notre Dame scheduled past the first year. That wasn’t programmed into the game in NCAA 07, though it is in NCAA 14 and I think NCAA 06. Funnily enough, Michigan-Notre Dame, a less-often played rivalry discontinued since Notre Dame began their open marriage (formal scheduling agreement) with the ACC, stays on the schedule.
Anyway, in 2006, USC and Ohio State both ran the table (going 12-0 and winning their conferences) and played in the national championship. In real life, OSU lost to Florida in the National Championship while USC beat their archrivals Michigan in the Rose Bowl. In this game, Florida won the Rose Bowl over Louisville. Back in 2006, the Big East (predecessor of the AAC) was considered a “BCS conference” and had an automatic bid to the BCS; this game locked them into playing against the ACC in the Orange Bowl even though in real life it rotated. Louisville’s main competition in the Big East was WVU, who were 12-0 and played in the Orange Bowl, which they lost to Virginia Tech.
Boise State, who in real life beat Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl to cap a 12-0 season that announced their presence to the nation, lost in this dynasty to Big XII champions #10 Nebraska 15-14. This season was the first of several uncanny Heisman winners, Arizona State wide receiver Daniel Caldwell. ASU, consistently more competitive in this campaign than they are in real life, did not make a BCS bowl this year. Troy, who has won almost every Sun Belt title in the history of this dynasty, won the Sun Belt. Iowa represented the Big Ten in the Sugar Bowl, beating conference winner Tennessee, while Michigan beat Georgia in the Capital One Bowl and Alabama beat Oklahoma in the Cotton Bowl. 2006 is also the only year I kept a week-to-week record of notable games until I took over a team. I mention this to say that Notre Dame seemed to lose every big game they played. Lost by 31 to #25 Georgia Tech when they were ranked #3 to open the season; lost to #11 Penn State the following week 26-21 while ranked #12; lost to North Carolina 30-29 after somehow battling back to #4 by week 10; lost 41-20 against #2 USC while ranked #10 in week 13.
2007 we had our second-straight wide receiver for Heisman, this time South Carolina’s Alexis Rakfoor (not his real name, from what I can tell from Sports Reference), who went on to beat Wisconsin the Capital One Bowl. Nice to see that program entioned; they’re typically terrible in this dynasty and I’ve belatedly tried to see if option football can rescue them. There were four repeat conference champions – Troy in the Sun Belt (they seriously win it an uncanny amount), Ohio State, who split the Big Ten with Wisconsin, Utah in the Mountian West, and Boise splitting the WAC with Hawaii. All the other ones turned over. Despite not winning their conference, West Virginia finished the season ranked number one, and played #2 Louisville for the national championship. Two Big East teams playing for the title. I imagine #3 Okalhoma, who beat Florida by 25 in the Fiesta Bowl, disputes the title.
In real life, the Heisman Trophy predominately favors quarterbacks. The last pure receiver to win it in real life was Desmond Howard (1991) and the last part-time receiver was either Charles Woodson (1998, cornerback, the only defensive player to ever win it) or Reggie Bush (2005, primarily a running back). Several of the QB’s to win it recently (like Joe Burrow at LSU, Caleb Williams at USC, and Jayden Daniels at LSU) are QBs that transferred from elsewhere. In the 2008 year of this dynasty, we get our first of those, with UNLV’s Rocky Hinds (transferred from USC). UNLV has been very successful over the course of this dynasty, whereas their 9-win season in 2023 is the best they’ve done in like half a century in real life.
This is the third straight season both Louisville and West Virginia are involved in the BCS, with #3 WVU winning the Orange Bowl over #10 Tennessee and #5 Louisville beating #9 Auburn in the Sugar Bowl. Penn State beat Virginia Tech 36-33 in double overtime to win the national title, so this is our first apparent split, with two undefeated teams from major conferences, estranged rivals who didn’t play each other at that (WVU and Penn State played annually from 1947 to 1992 but in real life 2023 was the first time they’d played since then). #6 USC lost to #4 Texas 41-20 in the Rose Bowl, their second such loss to Texas in four years. #11 Notre Dame’s 42-38 loss to #7 Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl is one of their few major bowl appearances in this dynasty, their first so far.
2009 had different intrigues. Louisville was very good again, taking the Big East’s Orange Bowl berth and shellacking Maryland. Big East runner-up WVU beat Penn State in overtime in the Fiesta Bowl. ACC runner-up Virginia Tech got shellacked by LSU in the Sugar Bowl. Tim Tebow, who in real life won the Heisman trophy as a sophomore after being a role player on the 2006 national championship team as a freshman and before winning a national championship as a junior in 2008, won the Heisman as a senior in this dynasty, and beat Michigan in the Rose Bowl. USC won their second title in four years, achieving a renewal Pete Carroll wasn’t able to provide in real life, winning in overtime against Texas, who they lost to after the 2005 season. Louisville has a claim, especially after getting passed over for the national championship game while undefeated, but USC are champs. I guess the extra data point of Texas’s conference championship win helped them out.
In 2010, we return to Heisman winning wide receivers, this one going to Mississippi’s Brad Dennis (again, not a real name; maybe this was Michael Hicks?). Florida returns to the Rose Bowl, beating USC. Louisville and WVU are both in the BCS again, ranked #4 and #3 respectively, winning the Sugar and Orange. The national title matchup? 11-1 Michigan and 12-0 conference mate Iowa. The Big Ten has an advantage on other teams on getting two teams into the title game because they have ten games but play 8 conference games, so two teams could hypothetically go 12-0 without playing. Anyway, Michigan won the game 22-21. Of the teams to play in BCS bowls, WVU is the only one whose record I don’t have recorded. They may have another claim to the natty. The weak Big East kept them out. UNLV, whose record I also don’t have was probably very good since they finished #10.
The 2011 season had some interesting wrinkles. Georgia beat Cal (a consistent Pac-10 contender in this game) for the Rose Bowl. #19 Alabama beat in-state neighbor #10 Troy (who at this point has won or shared six straight Sun Belt titles) 26-20 in the Sugar Bowl. South Carolina won their second Heisman, with QB Ric Estes (at this point, all of the players are computer-generated fictions). #6 Oklahoma beat #3 USC by 28 in the Fiesta Bowl, some belated revenge for USC’s 36-point win over the Sooners in the 2005 version of the game, for their second national championship under Pete Carroll. But, most notably, the Big Ten is playing internally for their second straight national title, between #2 Ohio State and #1 Penn State. Ohio State wins by 14. The Big Ten has now won two straight, three of the first six, and played in four. This wasn’t even a split championship year; neither was 2010. The BCS combination of coaches’ polls, media polls, and computers decided the second-best Big Ten team was better than 117 of the other schools playing for a title.
In 2012, the Big Ten *did* split the title – between BCS title participants #2 Penn State, Rose Bowl invitees #4 Iowa, and Capital One participants #5 Michigan. Penn State’s win over #1 Texas gave the Big Ten three straight. Penn State’s 31-21 win over Texas gave the Big Ten three straight. UNLV finished #16 and undefeated with a win over USC in the Las Vegas Bowl. #6 Troy went 12-0 but lost the Sugar Bowl 28-17 to #20 Florida. #3 WVU did not finish undefeated, but beat Nebraska 45-35 in the Fiesta Bowl. #7 Louisville lost to #12 VT in the Orange Bowl 50-33. Notre Dame running back Clay Oliver won the Heisman, but the Fighting Irish haven’t been in a major bowl in a while.
The 2013 season had some interesting stuff going on, too. First of all, the first sophomore Heisman winner came much later than in real life (2006’s aforementioned Tim Tebow), with #4 Iowa’s QB Mack Peoples taking home the hardware before an Orange Bowl win 41-20 over #5 Oklahoma. The closest BCS game was #7 WVU’s 34-28 win over #8 Florida. The biggest blowout was #10 Nebraska’s 53-7 win over #11 Troy. Unlike the real life mid-major BCS busters, Troy isn’t making a frequent case that the smaller conferences deserve more inclusion. The closest non-BCS major bowl (what I like to call the ‘undercard’)1 was #6 Texas 30-27 over #19 Auburn in the Cotton Bowl.
And who was in the title game but #2 Louisville and former Big East conference mate/real life future ACC conference mate #1 Miami, who lost to the Cardinals 35-24? As Louisville falls from the esteemed perch it’s been on in this run, I like to think Bobby Petrino has a statue on campus before he leaves, hopefully not in the wake of a salacious scandal. The 2013 season also saw tow major yardage records broken. Barry Sanders’s rushing record, 26 years old at this point in the game, broke behind the strong running of Michigan back B. Roberts, who had 2875 yards. That’s more than some QB’s throw for. Hawaii receiver A. Lee becomes the first 2000 yard receiver in FBS history, with 2214 yards.2 Insane numbers.
The 2014 season returns the controversy that would definitely bring a playoff (hypothetically… I mean, it happened in real life), with another Florida QB Heisman winner David Dortch, who threw for 57 passing touchdowns including some in a 33-30 loss to Michigan in the Rose Bowl. #6 Troy finally gets over their hump in the honorary Notre Dame invitational/Mid-Major BCS spot, beating in-state neighbor #8 Auburn 40-38 in the Sugar Bowl. Meanwhile, WVU absolutely pounds #24 Florida State in the Orange Bowl 50-26. That gives us three 13-0 teams with the only tiebreaker being computers and poll votes. And Pete Carroll wins his fifth national title (three more than in real life), beating undefeated Iowa 42-20. And there’s more controversy to come.
The 2015 season gives us our third QB Heisman in four tries, with Cal’s Seth Maxwell, who led the Pac-10 champion Golden Bears to the national championship game but couldn’t seal the deal, losing the second consecutive Big Ten-Pac 10 BCS title to Penn State. So I guess JoePa’s successors are more successful than he was at this point. The Nittany Lions are joined on the dais of undefeated teams by 14-0 Georgia Tech, who beat #7 WVU 35-28 in the Orange Bowl. Rice, who went 14-0 but were not invited to a major bowl, finished 14-0.
So, through ten years, what are our emerging trends? Well, no one is quite as dominant as the SEC and Alabama in real life, but the Big Ten are close. For example, in the last ten years the SEC has won six national championships and appeared in eight; through these first ten years, the Big Ten has won five of the national championships (3x Penn State, Michigan, Ohio State) and appeared in two others (Ohio State and Iowa each have a lost to USC which has provided three championships to the Pac-10). The Big Ten has also played itself twice for the title, which the SEC has also done in the last ten years.
Troy has won all ten Sun Belt conference titles so far; I think if they were a user-controlled team, they would have been invited to a more prominent conference (maybe the ACC, probably the SEC) so I may take them over and see about that. I’ve honestly been a little hard on them; aside from that blowout loss to Nebraska, they’ve mostly comported themselves well in the BCS, they just only have the one win over Auburn. In 2011 they lost by 6 to Alabama, then 11 to Florida, then after beating Auburn they lost by 4 to Tennessee. If anything, I just need to try and engineer another SBC team to compete with them.
WVU won the Big East six times, Louisville won the other four, and they’ve each taken a BCS championship game (WVU over Louisville, Louisville over Miami). Where the SEC has been pretty dominant is in the Heisman vote, where they’ve won 5 of 10 with two Florida QB’s, a South Carolina QB and receiver, and an Ole Miss receiver. QB has won out to dominate the voting despite a slow start. Rice has won the CUSA four times. UNLV has won outright or split the Mountain West six times, something they haven’t done even once in real life. Boise started off dominating the WAC but has fallen out of form. The SEC is rotating, if mostly between familiar faces (Tennessee, Auburn, Florida).
Seven national championships have been decided by double digits, three by one score, two in double overtime. The average score is 35.3-24.3. Seven times out of ten, the team ranked #2 has won. The average score of the Rose Bowl is 35.5-21.6; Sugar is 36-22; Orange is 37.5-22.5; Fiesta is 37.2-24.2. The Fiesta actually has big blow outs the most often (Oklahoma 59-34 over FLorida in 2007, Oklahoma 42-14 over USC in 2011, Nebraska 53-7 over Troy in 2013) but is buoyed by games decided by 1 (2006), 4 (2008), and 3 (2009) points to give it the lowest average difference. The Capital One Bowl is the only game I have the record for each of the first ten years; I have six Holiday Bowls, four Cotton, four Chick-Fil-A, two Alamo, and two Gator, but the bowl records get generally more robust going forward.
My summaries of each stop in the career in this space won’t be as thorough as my actual notes; mostly highlights and season narratives. Thanks for reading, and if this isn’t your bag, don’t worry, it’s just a wee temporary series.
Before the BCS, the Citrus Bowl, Cotton Bowl, and Peach Bowl were also considered relatively major. Because of their contracts with major conferences, they often still include high-level teams. Capital One was the sponsor of the Citrus Bowl (Big Ten and SEC) for a long time (now it’s CheezIts), so that’s what that is. The Peach Bowl (SEC and ACC) was and is sponsored by Chick-Fil-A so that one’s been called the Chick-Fil-A Bowl in the game and is now the Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl. The Cotton Bowl was longtime partner with the Southwest Conference (1941-1995) and its successor the Big-12 (1997-2014), and from 1999-2014 matched them with a team from the SEC, so that’s what is in the game but now I guess they’ve got no affiliation and just rotate with the playoff. They’re sponsored by Goodyear. The Cotton and Peach have made it into the semifinal rotation for the National Championship alongside the Rose, Sugar, Orange, and Fiesta, but the Citrus didn’t get the call-up.
University of Nevada, Reno’s Trevor Insley had 2060 receiving yards in 1999. They went 3-9 and played in the Big West that year, i.e. they were not at the 1-A/FBS level.