The Evolution of National Championship Teams

A quantitative comparison of the 2004 Hokies to every National Championship team from that year to the present

At the end of Virginia Tech’s 2022 football season, I ran the VT CFP - a modelled playoff of the best Virginia Tech football teams of the last 20 years. The 2004 team emerged as the clear victor.

Then, last week, I ran simulations of every Virginia Tech team since 2004 against that year’s National Champion. The key takeaway from that exercise is that outside of the 2004 team and a couple others when a comparatively lesser team won the title, Tech has not fielded a team that could compete at a National Championship level.

Now, to wrap up this multi-part series examining how good Tech has been and how far they have to go to get back to competing at that level, I will share the results of simulated games between the 2004 Hokies and every National Championship team since then. We know that Tech football has gotten much worse over the last two decades, but have the National Champions gotten better (or worse) over that same time period? And what is the key driver of those changes?

Let’s dive in…

How good was the 2004 team?

How good were the 2004 Hokies? Watch this 10 minute clip of the USC offense vs. the VT defense from the opening game of that season and then you can tell me.

I had an endzone seat 23 rows off the field that night in Landover. I taped the broadcast, but I don’t think I ever watched it all the way through. It wasn’t clear from my vantage point in the stadium just how hard the Hokies were hitting that night. Matt Leinart won the Heisman Trophy that year and the Trojans beat undefeated #2 Oklahoma 55-19 in the National Championship after sharing the title the year before. They were a juggernaut. And yet the Hokies led 10-7 at the half and trailed by a single point (14-13) with six minutes remaining in the game. Reggie Bush’s final touchdown reception came on a wheel route in which Blake Warren fell down in coverage. Warren, a career backup, started that night at Backer alongside Mikal Baquee at Mike, but Vince Hall and Xavier Adibi played a lot of first half snaps (it was the first regular season game for both). Adibi, as a redshirt freshman with incredible athletic ability, was shutting down Bush, but as the video shows, he tore his biceps late in the first half and would miss about six weeks. Without Adibi shadowing him, Norm Chow was able to scheme Bush open for two TD receptions in the second half - the deciding scores in the game.

Notice how big, strong, fast, and hard hitting that defense was. That was what it looked like in the glory days. The offense was average, mainly due to all the youth at wide receiver. They were uber talented, but Eddie Royal, Josh Morgan, and Justin Harper were true freshmen, Josh Hyman was a redshirt freshman, and David Clowney was a true sophomore.

Here is some trivia. Who started at WR for the Hokies that night against USC opposite Josh Hyman? The answer - Chris Clifton, a junior and converted quarterback. Hyman caught the Hokies’ only touchdown, and Clifton did not appear in the box score. Jeff King was the main target through the air - 4 catches for 65 yards. The following week against Western Michigan, Royal, Harper, and Morgan caught the first passes of the collegiate careers, and from then on the young guys got all the snaps out wide. As a point of comparison, imagine what the 2022 Hokies would have looked like had they featured four freshmen and a sophomore at WR.

So when the model says in a postseason rematch USC would be expected to eek out an 18-17 win over Virginia Tech, now you can see why. As close as Tech played the Trojans to open the season, they were not yet the team they would become. USC was the same team all season. Keep that all in mind as I walk you through the results of 19 years of simulated games against a slate of title winners.

Dominant in the 2000s

From 2004 through 2012, the Hokies went 6-3 in modelled games against each year’s National Champion. The only losses were to 2004 USC (18-17), 2005 Texas (22-11) and 2008 Florida (17-12). During this period, the average score was 17-10 in favor of Virginia Tech. The largest margin of victory for the Hokies was 19 points (over 2006 Florida) and the largest margin of defeat was 11 points against 2005 Texas. Notably, Tech went 3-0 against Nick Saban-coached Alabama, winning by an average score of 15-7.

National Champions are Getting Better

There was a clear inflection point in 2013. That was the year Jameis Winston led Florida St. to an undefeated season, culminating in a last minute win over Auburn. Alabama lost to Auburn that year in the “Kick Six” game. In 2014, the Crimson Tide lost to Ohio St. in the inaugural CFP semi-finals. The Tide won the title in 2015, but then lost the rematch to Clemson in 2016. In those four years, Alabama transitioned away from their ground and pound offense and adopted increasingly more spread concepts. Then, in 2017, Lane Kiffin was hired as offensive coordinator, and he brought a fully modern offense to Tuscaloosa.

Alabama was a late adopter, but once they took the plunge, that was it. There was no going back for anyone in college football. The 2017 Crimson Tide struggled on offense through most of the season and half the title game, then Tua came in, provided the necessary spark, and that was that. Every National Champion since 2018 has had a high powered offense. Outside of 2019 LSU, they all also had elite defenses. All of that is to say that National Champions today are better than they were 15-20 years ago.

Elite teams fully opened up their offenses starting in 2013.

From 2013 through 2022, VT 2004 was 2-7-1 against the National Champions. The wins came over 2016 Clemson and 2019 LSU and the tie was against 2015 Alabama. During that time period, the average score was 16-10 in favor of the opponent. Two teams shut out the 2004 Hokies: 2018 Clemson (30-0) and 2022 Georgia (12-0).

The table above suggests that National Champions have gotten better over time. Other data point in that same direction. Although ELO ratings have nudged up only slightly, net EPA per play has increased significantly among National Champions since 2004.

The gains, however, are all coming from the offenses, as defenses have seen their EPA per play decrease over time. Georgia’s defensive EPA in 2022 was slightly better than Auburn’s in 2010, but Georgia’s offensive EPA was nearly double that of the Tigers. And as we saw throughout this year’s playoff, better offenses impact opposing defenses directly, and also indirectly via offenses taking chances they wouldn’t have taken before (more aggressive on fourth down, attempting longer field goals, etc.). Sometimes those gambles pay off, and sometimes they do not.

Closing Thoughts

The key takeaway from this series of analyses is that while Virginia Tech has faded in the ranks of college football teams, the issue is two-fold. The Hokies, as a team, have gotten worse over time, but the best teams have also gotten better. So, while getting the team back to playing at a mid-2000s level would be a great achievement for Brent Pry and his staff, rather than returning Tech to being a perennial top-10 team, it would not return them to being a National Championship caliber team.

NIL and the transfer portal could accelerate the rebuilding process, but that is far from a given. Now that the portal has closed, I will turn to the roster and examining the types of players available in VT’s six-hour recruiting radius. It is no secret that Penn St. has taken over as the dominant program recruiting in the Commonwealth of Virginia. And yet and still, the Nittany Lions have not challenged for a National Championship under James Franklin. They currently stand at least a notch, and maybe two, below Ohio St. and Michigan in their own conference. So what is going on? I’ll begin a deep dive on that next week.