Most undeserving team to win a national title, college or pro...

Illinois fans never forgave us Hawkeye fans for Nick Bell, Bruce Pearl, and starting 5 white boys vs. them last year in Carver-Hawkeye! Good times, good times.

Nick Bell and now Robert Gallery plays of the Raiders. WTF does Al Davis sees in Hawkeye football players to make them look like busts???

 

That game should have gone much differently. Right at the start of the game, Illinois had the ball. The line opened up the largest hole I've ever seen.

The RB, Steve "Fumble" Feagin, promptly coughed up the ball on the way through said hole. Iowa recovered, and the mauling was on.

I thought Gallery was doing OK.

Bell was destined to get his bell rung. In the NFL, the LBs were the same size, so he was in trouble. If Oakland/L.A. had even used him as a third-down back like Bettis, he might have been OK.

 

1997 Nebraska football, which benefited from an illegal kick ball against Missouri to stay undefeated.

1985 Royals had a blown Denkinger call, though I think that was blown out of proportion.

1997 Arizona basketball beat only, what, three No. 1 seeds to win the title? Play a real schedule, Cats.

 

Agree completely, 100 percent.

 

Didnt Clemson backdoor into a national title in the early 1980s?

 

On the field, the Tigers earned it.

Off the field, Danny Ford cheated his butt off.

 

and I'm shocked no one's mentioned Georgia Tech in 1990.

 

How about '64, when they lost the bowl game and Arkansas went undefeated?

 

Young, Rice, Watters. Core, usual suspects drove that team.

Sanders, to me, was the only major-impact, free-agent signing on that team.

I don't get this one.....

 

Someone has.

 

If you accept the premise that several of their contracts were illegal then, to me, it couldn't be more undeserved.

DeBartolo went berserk after the 1993 season and just went out and spent whatever he wanted, rules be damned. Just thinking that there are felons in this country who can't even vote, I can't think of any specific team or owner who is less deserving than this team, this year.

 

Not true. The dominant side of their team that year was the defense, which is saying something with how good their offense was.

In addition to Deion, they also brought in Pro - Bowlers LB Ken Norton (1993 Pro Bowl), LB Rickey Jackson (1993), DE Richard Dent (1993), and DE Charles Mann (1991). That's five pro bowlers right there, all in one offseason. They also brought in LB Gary Plummer.

It has long been rumored that in order to procure all these signings under the cap, numerous violations occurred. One of the best - known of these was that Nike supposedly upped its endorsement compensation for Deion so that he could sign a bare - bones contract so the other pro bowlers could be signed. Leigh Steinberg was also rumored to have helped the 49ers skirt the cap around this time.

Simply put, there is no way to believe that the 49ers signings in the 1993 offseason add up financially. As I said previously, DeBartolo threw a hissy fit after '93 and simply made up his mind that he would win the title the next year, no matter what. Remember, this isn't baseball where this is no cap. In '93, a cap existed, and all the dots lead to the conclusion that future felon DeBartolo, with the help of willing agents and companies, blatantly defied the salary cap. When the NFL fined the 'Niners in 2000 (?) for previous salary cap violations, many owners around the league wanted them to delve into this history, but the image conscious league declined to do so.

Now these allegations can't be proven. Neither can it be proven that Barry did 'roids. But all the circumstantial evidence is there.

The 1994 Championship of the 'Niners is a fraud, plain and simply. When I started reading this thread, this was the first example I thought of. I'm 99.9% sure that this team committed totally egregious violations and is therefore a totally undeserved champion.