With the first full weekend of the 2018 college football season upon us, it’s time to bare down, strip away all the other nonsense and get to the meat of this post: streakers.
2017 national champion UCF* entered this season with the nation’s longest winning streak at 13 in a row. Thanks to Thursday’s thrashing of overmatched UConn, that streak now stands at 14 straight as Central Florida hasn’t dropped a game since a 31-13 Cure Bowl loss to Arkansas State on Dec. 17, 2016.
The only other FBS team with a double-digit winning streak at the moment is Lane Kiffin‘s FAU Owls, which have won 10 in a row after starting out the 2017 season 1-3. Northwestern, which dropped Purdue Thursday night, owns the longest Power Five plus streak at nine straight. The second-longest Power Five winning streak? Ohio State’s five in a row.
Troy, it should be mentioned since we’re here and all, has won seven straight for the fourth-longest winning streak in the country and second-longest amongst Group of Five teams.
Conversely, UTEP, which faces FCS Northern Arizona tonight, carries the burden of the nation’s longest losing streak at 12 straight. Four other FBS teams have double-digit streaks entering the new season -- Kansas (11), Illinois (10) and Oregon State (10).
And then, bless their hearts, there’s the poor Pac-12.
Prior to Friday night’s action, 11 of the 12 schools in that Left Coast conference had entered the season on at least a one-game losing streak. Utah, which beat FCS Weber State Thursday night to stretch its winning streak to three games, was the only member of the conference that trundled its way into the 2018 season on a non-losing streak.
There was some good news on the losing streak front for the league Friday as both Stanford (31-10 over San Diego State) and Colorado (beatdown of in-state rival Colorado State) won last night, snapping losing streaks of two and three straight, respectively.
One final conference note: Alabama has the longest current winning streak in the SEC. While the reigning national champions holding that honor isn’t exactly a surprise, the fact that it’s a mere two in a row, and no other SEC team can even match it let alone top it, certainly raises an eyebrow. Or at least an eyelash.
(*Don’t blame me, blame the NCAA and its 2018 FBS Records Book.)