Hoops & Helmets 2022: It’s our ranking of all 130 schools that play major college football and basketball. Who had the best and worst years?
@RichCirminiello & @PeteFiutak
Which schools that play both college football at the FBS level and major college basketball had the best and worst seasons? Which fan bases had the most fun, and which ones had it rough?
It’s our annual Hoops & Helmets ranking of all 130 schools that play both of the major sports at the highest level.
A few ground rules before we get started. We put the schools into four categories, with a few major exceptions.
No bowl, no NCAA Tournament, no fun. These schools had the double whammy of not being bowl eligible and not getting into the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
No bowl, NCAA Tournament. These schools might have made it into the NCAA Tournament, but they weren’t good enough on the football field to get bowl eligible.
Bowl, no NCAA Tournament. These schools were bowl eligible, but they didn’t get to play the part of the basketball season that actually matters. And finally …
Bowl, NCAA Tournament. These schools got bowl eligible – but not all of them got to play thanks to COVID issues – and danced in the hoops madness.
About those major exceptions, if you did something worthy of a t-shirt you get extra credit. That means if you won a championship of some sort – or got into the College Football Playoff or Final Four – other things are overlooked, to a point.
We mostly go by the long haul of the regular season, but the biggest games meant the most. If you’re a top basketball team and you rocked your regular season and fizzled on Thursday of the NCAAs, that matters.
A * means the school won the conference championship in football or tournament in basketball.
