National publication ranks top 10 champions since 1998

247Sports ranked the top 10 college football champions in the BCS and playoff era this week and LSU football, unsurprisingly, topped their list.

According to Brad Crawford of 247Sportsthe 2019 Tigers have been college football’s top champions since the 1998 season when the first BCS Championship was contested.

Here’s what Crawford had to say about the 2019 LSU team that completely dominated college football.

This LSU team was special and recency bias aside, went through a row of elite competition bruisers en route to an undefeated season. Fueled by perhaps the most remarkable quarterback performance of this century, LSU’s magical undefeated run to a national title in the 2019 campaign featured an unprecedented seven wins over the top 10 teams (at game time ). The run also included record numbers from Heisman Trophy winner Joe Burrow (60 touchdown passes). The Tigers won 12 double-digit games and led college football with 48.4 points per game. LSU would go on to tie the NFL draft record for a single school in a seven-round draft with 14 selections, including five in the first round.

LSU football’s 2019 season was one type of special we’ll never see again

We’ll probably never see another season like the one we saw from the 2019 Tigers. The only close games LSU played in 2019 were a pair of games against SEC rivals West Auburn and Alabama.

LSU beat Auburn 23-20 (the only time LSU scored less than 30 points in 2019). They beat Bama 46-41.

Looking back, it makes absolutely no sense that LSU was ranked No. 2 in the AP poll until Dec. 7 when they faced Georgia in the SEC Championship (Ohio State was ranked No. 1 at the time, but LSU passed them for first place after beating Georgia). Looking back, the Tigers were clearly the best team all season. Although to be fair, I don’t think anyone realized exactly how special LSU was this season until they beat the Bulldogs for the SEC Championship.

Interestingly, 247Sports ranked the 2005 Texas Longhorns as the No. 2 champion since 1998.

I would have had the Miami Hurricanes in 2001 ranked second. In fact, they’re the only team that I think could give the 2019 Tigers a hard time. This Miami team was absolutely full of talent (they had 17 future first-round picks).

2001 Miami destroys 2005 Texas. And if 2001 Miami plays 2019 LSU, it would probably be the greatest college football game ever played.

Incidentally, none of LSU’s other championship teams since 1998 (2003 and 2007) were in 247Sports’ top 10.