The MNC Wednesday miniseries was one of our original pieces of regular programming, going back to March 2020. We are proud of the revisions we made to historical mistakes, and we intend to keep doing the same in as many areas as we can. Of course, nowadays we are going backwards in time to look at the mythical national championships before the Associated Press pollsters got involved. Here we go again …

The 1932 MNC: USC (Helms, NCF); USC (DMP)

We start with the USC Trojans, who were named champions way back when. The profile? 10-0, No. 1 in the SRS, No. 2 in the SOS, and a Rose Bowl win over the No. 9 team in the SRS. That is going to be nearly impossible to beat, in truth, because the Trojans beat nine major-college teams on their way to a perfect season. The defense gave up just 13 points all season, while throwing eight shutouts in the process. Dang.

Meanwhile, the Michigan Wolverines won the Western Conference (B1G), with the following credentials: 8-0, No. 3 in the SRS, and No. 3 in the SOS. They also gave up just 13 points on the season in total, with the defense earning six shutouts. However, the lack of an extra game against major-college competition—and also a bowl game—hurts the Wolverines in a direct comparison to the Trojans, without common opponents.

The Colgate Raiders finished pretty high up in the estimation of many, playing as an independent with the following profile: 9-0, No. 5 in the SRS, and No. 100 in SOS. They only played five major-college opponents, so that clearly hurt their SOS while taking them out of this conversation. However, with that undefeated record, the Raiders still managed a Top 5 SRS finish, so we wanted to make sure they got some street cred.

Lastly, the Texas Christian University Horned Frogs finished pretty well, too: 10-0-1, No. 10 in SRS, and No. 65 in the SOS. They did not play in a bowl game, and they only faced seven-major college teams. The SOS hurts, obviously, but again, we wanted to make sure we mentioned the Horned Frogs, as it was no easy task to go undefeated through the Southwest Conference at the time, and that’s what TCU managed to do. Nice.

In the end, this comes down to USC and Michigan, and absent any head-to-head result, we have to go on what we have: the Trojans would have been almost a 3.5-point favorite on a neutral field against the Wolverines, and even though Michigan won the Western Conference, the Purdue Boilermakers (7-0-1) actually finished higher in the SRS (by a small margin). The two teams did not face each other in 1932.

Alas, Michigan has no edges here over USC, and we confirm the Trojans as the 1932 MNC. For us, this is the 12th time the school has earned our MNC designation—pulling back into a tie with Ohio State for the most ever in our corner of the interwebs. Ironic that both schools now play in the B1G, too, after being adversaries for so many decades in the old alignments. Only time will tell which school pulls ahead now.