The 25 best college football teams to not win a national championship

Best college football teams without a national championship: 2008 USC Trojans

According to Connelly’s system, it was actually USC that was the best team in the country in 2008. It was a historic year, with four genuinely great teams in USC, Texas, Florida, and Oklahoma. It would have been a perfect season for our current format of the four-team playoff.

Pete Carroll’s penultimate USC team was one of his very best. The Trojans finished the 2008 NCAA season 12-1, capping their seventh consecutive season with at least 11 victories.

The 2008 Trojans were loaded, led by Mark Sanchez at quarterback and a dominant defense led by Clay Matthews and Rey Maualuga, who were among a nation-leading 11 NFL Draft picks the following spring.

USC announced itself as a legitimate title contender in September with a 35-3 shellacking of then-No. 5 Ohio State on the second weekend of the season. 12 days later, however, USC got caught sleepwalking and was upset in Corvallis by what turned out to be a quality Oregon State squad.

The loss to the Beavers ultimately prevented USC from having a shot at the title, as the margin for error in a season with so many quality teams was razor-thin.

Even still, USC proved to be one of the nation’s elite teams, mostly dominating the rest of the regular season. Only Arizona played the Trojans within one possession the rest of the season, with Carroll’s squad earning impressive wins over Oregon and rivals Notre Dame and UCLA.

USC was ranked No. 4 heading into the Rose Bowl. The Trojans dispatched Big Ten Champion Penn State 38-24 to earn its 12th victory and a second-place finish in the Coaches Poll.

A four-team playoff in 2008 would have provided us with a playoff for the ages. Instead, we’re left with a lot of what-ifs with two of the best teams to never win a national title in Texas and USC being left out in the cold.