College football’s longest active conference title droughts
By Zach Bigalke
American Athletic Conference
Longest Drought: SMU Mustangs (Last title: 1984 in SWC)
In the early 1980s, SMU was one of the most dynamic teams in the country. Under Ron Meyer and Bobby Collins, the Mustangs won three Southwest Conference titles between 1981 and 1984. Each year, Southern Methodist was in the hunt for the national title.
Most know what happened next, as it was revealed that the Mustangs had been operating a payroll for their players. The NCAA came down hard, issuing the only death penalty ever given to a football team. More than three decades later, SMU is still trying to recover from the two seasons when its program was shuttered.
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After the SWC collapsed, SMU spent time in the WAC and in Conference USA before moving to the American in 2013. In the time since the team’s last conference title, the Mustangs had a four-year stretch of bowl appearances between 2009 and 2012. That serves as the high-water mark at this point for a program that is still looking for its next conference championship.
Honorable Mentions
- Navy Midshipmen: The Midshipmen have never won a conference championship. That, of course, is largely due to the fact that they long operated as an independent program in football. Navy have only played two seasons in the American, so their drought is technically not all that long.
- South Florida Bulls: The Bulls played their first season in 1997 in the I-AA ranks. They joined Conference USA in 2003, and two years later moved on to the Big East. South Florida came closest to winning a championship in 2007, but have never finished higher than third in a given season.