“Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more …” — William Shakespeare, Henry V

Our MNC Wednesday miniseries is back with a prequel add-on stretch, basically. We are going to review the pre-Associated Press mythical national championships prior to 1936, in reverse chronological order. Sabermetric data exists in minimal form, and we will sort through all other information available to make careful decision, even as several experts have done this already. Their names/systems will come up, aplenty.

Why are we doing this? For consistency, basically, and perhaps a bit of boredom, too, in the football offseason; the UFL just isn’t enough for us, nor is the NFL Draft, etc. And even though we’re kind of done with college football (emotionally and mentally), the past is always up for grabs in our corner of the interwebs. So here we go with a look at the 1935 college football season—and our take on its champion.

The 1935 MNC: Minnesota (Helms, NCF); Ohio State (DMP)

The Minnesota Golden Gophers have been awarded this MNC retroactively by the Helms Athletic Foundation and by the National Championship Foundation. We do not comment on their methods or their results; we will just determine whether or not we would confirm or revise these retro MNCs, similar to what we did with the Heisman Trophy award analyses. So, then, what about Minnesota? Why did it get chosen?

Well, the Golden Gophers posted an 8-0 record which included seven wins over major-college opponents. They tied for the Western Conference championship with Ohio State, which also went 5-0 in league play. Ohio State finished 7-1 due to a loss to the No. 12 team in the mathematical SRS rankings—Notre Dame. While Minnesota didn’t play Notre Dame, it did beat No. 17 Nebraska. Overall, though, there is the dilemma.

The Buckeyes finished No. 2 in the SRS after playing the No. 11 SOS, while the Golden Gophers finished No. 1 in the SRS after playing the No. 27 SOS. Ohio State’s schedule also included eight major-college opponents. And we can also toss in Princeton: the Tigers went 9-0 but finished just No. 9 in the SRS because of the No. 82 SOS. Remember how we used to do this with the original MNC miniseries analysis? Yep.

The Princeton example is for context: all records are not created equally, so the Buckeyes are able to “erase” a loss with that 16-spot edge over Minnesota in the SOS. But the Western Conference itself was top heavy, as no other league member finished higher than No. 24 in the SRS. The No. 3 team in the SRS—Southern Methodist—lost the Rose Bowl to Stanford, and its SOS rating (31) didn’t cut the mustard, anyway. More?

We want to explore the Top 10 of the SRS, really, so … No. 4 Duke had two losses against the No. 34 SOS, while No. 5 LSU played the No. 8 SOS slate before losing the Sugar Bowl to No. 7 Texas Christian—itself 12-1 against the No. 33 SOS. We also have to keep in mind the conference-title mandate from our original analysis as we go through these earlier seasons, and no other school in the Top 10 rates out here on all items.

So, it’s back to Minnesota or Ohio State, which didn’t play each other in conference. We liked the Buckeyes’ slate much better, as it’s good enough to overcome the one loss to a highly rated team. Ohio State lost to a team better than any team the Golden Gophers beat, and we can’t hold that against them. It also was just a five-point defeat, so we’re looking at a close game that Minnesota didn’t schedule with its eighth game.

We give this MNC to Ohio State … so, including the first CFP title of the 12-team era (which we did not bother evaluating, as we see it as a gauntlet any team has to earn), that gives the Buckeyes a whopping 12 mythical national championships. That is one more than the USC Trojans in our books right now. Wow!