The Best Team Ever

One of my daughters and her husband teach at USF, a tiny Jesuit college high on a hill in San Francisco, but I remember USF from my youth. I went to UCLA where my roommate, a black football player on an undefeated team, insisted I go to a basketball game to see a USF sophomore named Bill Russell. Russell did make my eyes bug. He changed the way basketball is played. UCLA won, and that was the last game USF lost in the next 2.5 years. That was a great team but not the greatest in history. The best team ever, hard as it is to believe, was the USF football team of 1951, the last football squad the small college could afford. Their final season made them immortal.

The football team went undefeated, produced nine players who joined the National Football League, and sent three players to the professional football hall of fame. At the end of the 1951 season, the team was invited to play in the Orange Bowl, provided only that their two African American players stayed home. The team took a vote. They all stayed home. That's the best team ever. 

On how many college football teams does every member get an honorary Ph.D? (You can catch the story today, Sunday, on ESPN.)