Posted by Dr Fro 10:07 AM

A blogger came up with his list of Top Ten Dirtiest NCAA Football Programs of the Past Twenty Years. (Read bottom to top or you will get confused - it was a countdown that is now complete.)

He used his own approach to the rating. Though he goes on to explain for pages, it comes down to an approach with which I very much agree:

1. Infractions committed by the school - counted
2. Infractions committed by boosters - not counted directly, but when it leads to a "lack of institutional control" it is counted in category #1
3. Criminal activity of players - not counted.

Category three is not counted for two reasons, the biggest one relating to the difficulty in gathering the statistics

I love how crazy people get when this topic of cheating comes up. Bring up college football playoffs, you will get an argument. Bring up Iraq, arguments. But if you really want to get under people's feathers (that was intentional and is a Stoopsism), bring up the topic of who cheats the most in college football. Look at the comments below the explanation of his approach, and you get gems such as this:

8. Oklahoma beats out Alabama, and where is Texas? (the dirtiest, and most blatant cheats ever) Ok sure over the last 7 years Texas has cleaned up its act (somewhat). I see however your top 10 list goes back 20 years which brings to mind Texas boosters, and staff being banned, and fired for paying refs, paying players, buying them cars, and fancy houses, oh, and lets not forget the NCAA Investigator who got fired for taking a bribe from the University of Texas.

Fantastic (pun intended)! I have no idea what he is talking about here, but he is certain that it is true. If anybody can show me a credible citation, I would (seriously) love to read it. I tried the links at http://www.ncaa.org/enforcement/ to no avail.

The reason why I get such a kick out of such discussions is that there is always the line of reasoning thrown out that goes something like, "All teams cheat. My team got caught, but all teams that haven't been caught are cheating just as much. No, actually they are cheating more. Much more. Just look at how many games they have won. Since they are the devil incarnate, they could only win by cheating."

Being one who likes to stir the pot, this is great fun.

The blogger cites this article/list as being his inspiration. The biggest difference in the two lists is the "all time" versus "of the last 20 years" criteria. However, a lot of the same schools appear on both lists.

Read the responses to that article here. The first says:

Gimme a break, dude. WTF has TAMU done to break the rules?! You have the nerve to call the Aggie's integrity into question? We are certainly the most respectable school in the BIg12 and more than likely, the country.

You mention the Aggies and don't even care to remark about USC? Lol, wow. What about Tech having lost about 10 years worth of wins due to infractions? Get real.

That is not just faulty reasoning, it is ignorance of facts. He gets called out pretty quickly, though.

Oh good times, good times.

I am so looking forward to college football season.

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