For the first time in 33 years, and for the time being, the same school has No. 1 teams in both football and basketball:
National championships in both sports would be the crowning achievement.
For the time being, Ohio State can savor being the first school in nearly 33 years to be ranked No. 1 simultaneously in football and men?s basketball.
Basketball joined football on top of the heap yesterday when a panel of college coaches voted the Buckeyes No. 1 in the USA Today-ESPN poll.
Ohio State is believed to be only the third school to hold No. 1 rankings in both sports simultaneously, an athletic department spokesman said, and the first since Notre Dame in January 1974.
“Unbelievable,” OSU athletic director Gene Smith said. “I was there.”
Smith was a member of the Notre Dame football team voted No. 1 after defeating Alabama in the Sugar Bowl on Dec. 31, 1973. Less than three weeks later, on Jan. 19, 1974, he was back on campus to watch the Notre Dame basketball team become No. 1 by ending UCLA?s 88-game winning streak.
Smith said the fact that Ohio State is the first school since to achieve the double “validates a couple things. One, the great job that (former athletic director) Andy Geiger did in hiring (coaches) Jim Tressel and Thad Matta. We should never forget that. And it validates the type of student-athlete we?ve been able to recruit to Ohio State.”
The only other school known to have been No. 1 in football and men?s basketball simultaneously was UCLA in 1967. The Bruins held the No. 1 ranking in football for one week in November, when the basketball team was the reigning NCAA champion but the season had not begun.
Interesting.
November 28th, 2006 at 4:19 pm
geez thanks…..now let me go puke.
GO BLUE!!!
November 28th, 2006 at 6:10 pm
Charles
Let’s see…..
Michigan lost to OSU on Nov. 18th (for the second year in a row, in case you forgot
) and, as far as I can tell, isn’t even ranked in basketball right now.
Go Bucs !
November 29th, 2006 at 8:22 am
Not the best of times for the Maize and Blue. Hence my reference to the puke! Maybe it is the poison in your nut.
We will be a top 5 school for the Directors’ Cup, the measure of the overall strength of all teams in the athletic department at a University.