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The original was posted on /r/cfb by /u/FCBStar-of-the-South on 2025-09-19 17:51:35+00:00.
Under my previous post about the success of the nerds (Georgia Tech and Vanderbilt) in this week’s AP poll, u/Mekthakkit asked:
Now I’m wondering if there are any school pairings where school A has never outranked school B in the history of the AP.
Since I had already downloaded all the AP poll data, I figured this wouldn’t be too hard to answer.
Disclaimer: I am excluding preseason and post-season (final) polls for this analysis.
Most Dominated
According to Winsipedia, there are 19 currently active FBS schools who have never been ranked. Take this number with a grain of salt as Winsipedia, for one, incorrectly lists Air Force as having been ranked for only one week.
There are undoubtedly countless historical schools who has also never been ranked. If your school is/was ranked at any time when these schools are/were active, your school dominates. But beating down is not very fun.
Central Michigan and Western Kentucky have both been ranked 25th for percisely one week. For CMU that was the final week of 2009 and for WKU the final week of 2015. These two teams are dominated by all 24 teams ranked ahead of them.
Several more teams briefly featured at 20th place back when the poll only had 20 schools, so they are dominated by 19 teams.
What if we only look at teams who have been ranked five times or more?
| Team | Dominated By | Top Rank | Times Ranked |
|---|---|---|---|
| UNLV | 15 | 19 | 5 |
| UTEP | 12 | 23 | 5 |
| NM State | 11 | 14 | 5 |
| Ball State | 10 | 12 | 9 |
| James Madison | 8 | 18 | 8 |
| Del Monte Pre-Flight | 7 | 10 | 8 |
| Western Michigan | 7 | 12 | 9 |
| App State | 7 | 20 | 9 |
| Kent State | 7 | 18 | 5 |
| Second Air Force | 6 | 15 | 5 |
Most Dominant
What are the teams that has done the most dominating? Again we are only looking at schools who have been ranked five times or more.
| Team | Teams Dominated |
|---|---|
| Ohio State | 18 |
| Notre Dame | 14 |
| Michigan | 11 |
| Alabama | 11 |
| Oklahoma | 8 |
| Georgia | 8 |
| LSU | 6 |
| Army | 6 |
| Texas | 5 |
| Navy | 4 |
And if we relax the criteria to include every team that has ever been ranked:
| Team | Teams Dominated |
|---|---|
| Ohio State | 35 |
| Michigan | 32 |
| Notre Dame | 30 |
| Army | 24 |
| Alabama | 23 |
| Oklahoma | 20 |
| Texas | 20 |
| USC | 18 |
| Tenessee | 17 |
| Navy | 16 |
I would be remiss to not shoutout Iowa Pre-flight who landed (pun intended) just outside the top 10 on both of these lists. They dominate 13 teams, of which three was ranked five times or more (Del Monte Pre-flight, Second Air Force, and March Field). Playing from 1942 to 1944, the seahawks compiled an all-time record of 26-5 for a 0.839 win percentage, which is over 10% more than the highest amongst currently active teams.
The nerds at Penn also did pretty well for themselves, dominating a total of 14 teams.
Longest Domination
The best kind of domination is a long-time domination. So who is the unlucky team to still be dominated despite being ranked more times than all other dominated teams? That turns out to be UCF. And the team doing the dominating, perhaps unsurprisngly, is Alabama.
UCF was ranked for 49 weeks between 2010 and 2022 at a high of #7, yet they were never ranked above Alabama. As if we do not have even more stats proving Saban’s dominance, in these 49 weeks:
- Alabama was ranked #1 for 30 weeks
- Alabama was ranked outside of the top 5 for 6 weeks
- Alabama was ranked outside of the top 10 for 1 week
Only other teams to still be dominated despite ranking for 30+ times:
- Miami (OH) is ranked 36 times at a high of 12 but is still dominated by Michigan, Ohio State, and Oklahoma
- Rutgers is ranked 33 times at a high of 7 but is still dominated by Ohio State.
Ohio State’s domination over Miami (OH) is also by far the longest domination between two schools from the same state or from the two sides in anything resembling a rivalry.
The longest same-conference domination occurs between Penn and Columbia. Between 1940 and 1947, Columbia was ranked 14 times at a high of 10 but never outranked Penn.
ETA:
Randolph Field is dominated by army despite a highest rank of #2 in 1944.
Memphis is not dominated by anyone despite only achieving a highest rank of 15. Only 6 schools are not dominated by any other without ever ranking in the top 10. They are:
Memphis (15), Temple (13), Toledo (13), East Carolina (12), Hawaii (11), Marshall (11)
Data
You can find all domination pairs here.