We’re back today with our MNC Wednesday miniseries, diving deeper into the past to see if the “experts” got it right. Sometimes they do, but as we move back through time, the last year we agreed with these experts was 1928, when Georgia Tech won the mythical national championship. Overall, though, the prequel years have been “better” than the modern era that began in 1936. For the 11 prequel columns we’ve done, seven seasons have produced matching champs.

The 1924 MNC: Notre Dame (Helms, NCF); Notre Dame (DMP)

So, the Fighting Irish posted a 10-0 record and finished No. 1 in the SRS rankings by quite a margin (almost five points ahead of Alabama). Are there any flaws in Notre Dame’s mathematical profile? Time will tell, as this was the first time the Irish played in a bowl game, beating Stanford 27-10 in Notre Dame’s first trip to the Best Coast for a game. Thus, two different “rivalries” were born: the Irish versus the then-Indians, not to mention the eventual Notre Dame-USC series.

But we digress: the Irish played the eighth-toughest schedule in the country, despite playing two small schools to kick off the slate of games in 1924. Notre Dame also finished sixth in scoring offense and 22nd in scoring defense. There’s not a lot of daylight there for other schools to sneak through, but we will line up a few of the pretenders to this crown. Start with the Crimson Tide: it posted an 8-1 record against the No. 32 SOS, so Alabama really can’t leapfrog the Irish here.

Plus, the Tide had a particularly bad loss: a 17-0 whitewashing on its home field against the Centre Colonels (?). Yes, you read that correctly. Centre College is now a Division III school, but it was considered a “major college” in 1924. Either way, losing at home that badly isn’t a good thing, so Alabama is out. Is there any other school to rationally consider? We think only Yale has a distant claim to the title with its 6-0-2 record, built on the No. 2 schedule in the nation. That’s impressive.

The Bulldogs played a full schedule of major-college opponents, finishing 28th in scoring offense and 18th in scoring defense. The two ties are what hurt them, really, as Notre Dame’s perfect record against a Top 10 schedule can’t be overcome. Still, Yale tied Army on the Bulldogs’ home field, while the Irish went on the road to beat Army. That’s a circumstantial piece of evidence, of course, and it’s not really needed here to determine that Notre Dame is the MNC.

By our revised count, this is the tenth title for the Fighting Irish, and they trail the Trojans (13) and the Ohio State Buckeyes (12) in the overall standings. No other school has reached double digits in our long run of retrospective analysis here. We clearly have a Top 3 grouping for the best college football programs ever here with these three dominant teams.