College football's most unbreakable records, from Barry Sanders to Bobby Bowden

In every sport, there are hallowed records, dubious records and records that are seemingly unbreakable.

College football has evolved greatly over the years -- everything from rules changes and style of play to the number of games in a season -- but there are some records and accomplishments that have stood the test of time.

Some good, some not so good.

We've examined the past 75 years in college football, tracing back to the 1950 season, and have ranked the 10 most "unbreakable" records in the sport, listing them in order of least likely to be topped. We also dug up some of the more obscure accomplishments (and failures) during that period.

Again, we're only considering play since 1950, so iconic records such as Tennessee going the entire 1939 regular season unbeaten, untied and unscored upon under then-Major Robert Neyland, or Georgia Tech's 222-point margin of victory over Cumberland in 1916 are not on our list.

Undoubtedly, you'll let us know if we missed anything.

1. Oklahoma's 47-game winning streak

When surveying the most dominant college football machines in history, the conversation begins and ends with the Bud Wilkinson-led Oklahoma teams of the 1950s. The Sooners bulldozed their way to 47 consecutive wins, a streak that began in 1953 and lasted most of five seasons, producing back-to-back national championships in 1955 and 1956. Oklahoma held its opponents to single digits in 35 of the 47 wins and recorded 22 shutouts.

Unranked Notre Dame, a 19-point underdog, ended the streak on Nov. 16, 1957, with a 7-0 victory in Norman. The Irish scored the winning touchdown inside the final four minutes on a fourth-and-goal play from the 3-yard line, then intercepted a pass in their own end zone in the final seconds to seal the upset, leaving the home crowd stunned. Many of the fans sat in the stands for nearly 30 minutes trying to process the unthinkable -- an OU loss.

Nearly 70 years later, nobody has come close to that streak. Toledo won 35 straight from 1969 to 1971. Miami (2000-02) and USC (2003-05) each won 34 in a row. Even those star-studded Georgia teams under Kirby Smart failed to seriously challenge the mark. The Bulldogs won 29 in a row during their run to back-to-back national championships in 2021 and 2022.

With the College Football Playoff era upon us and teams having to play as many as four postseason games to win the national title, not to mention conference championship games, it's difficult to imagine a team going what would amount to three straight seasons unscathed. This is a record teams will be chasing for a long time, maybe forever.

2. Barry Sanders' magical season

One of the most electrifying players in the history of the sport, Barry Sanders put up dizzying numbers in 1988, his junior season at Oklahoma State.

Yes, his single-season NCAA record of 2,628 rushing yards was challenged last season by Boise State's Ashton Jeanty (2,601 yards), but there's a catch. Sanders' total came in just 11 games, while Jeanty played in 14. What's more, bowl statistics didn't count when Sanders was playing, and he had an additional 222 yards against Wyoming in the Holiday Bowl. So if those yards are added, Sanders' total jumps to 2,850.

What seems untouchable is Sanders' NCAA record of 238.9 rushing yards per game. For perspective, Jeanty averaged 185.8 yards last season. In fact, only two other running backs in major college football history have averaged 200 rushing yards per game in a season, USC's Marcus Allen in 1981 (212.9) and Cornell's Ed Marinaro (209) in 1971. Sanders had four 300-yard games in 1988, and counting the bowl game, rushed for 43 touchdowns.

3. Florida State's top-5 finishes

For all the late Bobby Bowden accomplished during his Hall of Fame career, his remarkable consistency could be the most impressive thing. His Florida State teams finished in the top 5 of every final AP poll from 1987 to 2000, an amazing run no matter the era.

Bowden finished his legendary 34-year career at FSU with two national championships (and could have won a few more had it not been for those dreaded missed field goals against Miami), and more importantly, he put Florida State football on the map.

Think about it: Fourteen straight top-5 finishes. Pete Carroll had some dominant teams at USC, and the Trojans' longest streak was seven straight top-5 finishes (2002-08). The same is true for Oklahoma under Wilkinson (1952-58). And while Alabama won six national titles under Nick Saban, his longest run of top-5 seasons was five in a row (2014-18).

4. Oklahoma's wishbone onslaught

If an offense is rushing for more than 250 yards per game today (there were four in 2024), that's considered a punishing running attack. In 1971, with Barry Switzer as offensive coordinator, Oklahoma averaged a staggering 472.4 rushing yards per game.

The Sooners had installed the wishbone the year before, and nobody could slow them down. They averaged 45 points per game and lost only once, to eventual national champion Nebraska 35-31 in what was billed as the "Game of the Century." Even in that loss, Oklahoma rushed for 279 yards.

The last team to come within 50 yards of the Sooners' record was the 1987 Oklahoma team, which averaged 428.8 yards per game. No team in the past 30 years has reached even 400 yards. Even triple-option teams haven't come close. Army was first nationally in rushing last season, averaging 300.5 yards per game.

5. Throwing it to the wrong team

Not all records are enshrined in trophy cases. Florida quarterback John Reaves threw an NCAA-record nine interceptions (on 66 passing attempts) in a 38-12 loss to Auburn in 1969. Reaves was a prolific passer and put up better career numbers than Gators Heisman Trophy winner Steve Spurrier, but Florida's only loss of the 1969 season was "one of those days."

When Reaves left Florida in 1971, he was college football's all-time leading passer with 7,549 yards, and he was selected in the first round of the NFL draft. Reaves died in 2017 at the age of 67. He joked years after that forgettable game that the "safeties were the only guys who were open that day." In this age of college football, any coach that kept a quarterback in a game long enough to throw nine interceptions probably would be looking for a new job the next week.

6. Derrick Thomas' sack parade

Derrick Thomas was a generational pass rusher. He once had seven sacks in an NFL game, which is still a record. As a senior linebacker at Alabama in 1988, Thomas gobbled up opposing quarterbacks at an astonishing rate, finishing with 27 sacks (39 tackles for loss) on his way to earning SEC Defensive Player of the Year honors.

Thomas was unblockable that season, but you won't find his eye-popping numbers in the NCAA record book. At the time, sacks weren't an official NCAA statistic, meaning Arizona State's Terrell Suggs has the "official" NCAA sack record with 24 in 2002. While defenders play more games now (Thomas played in 11 games in 1988), no FBS player has reached the 20-sack plateau in the past 20 years. Last season, the FBS sack leader was Marshall's Mike Green with 17.

Thomas, who finished with 52 career sacks at Alabama, played 11 seasons in the NFL, all with the Kansas City Chiefs. He died in 2000 at the age of 33 following a car accident.

7. Hat trick for Antonio Perkins

If a player returns one kick for a touchdown in a game, he's probably not going to get a chance to return another one. And if he returns two, the only way he's going to touch the ball again is after it goes out of bounds. But three punt returns for a touchdown?

Perkins did the unfathomable in 2003 when he became the first player in NCAA history to score on three returns in a game, going 84, 74 and 65 yards, in Oklahoma's 59-24 rout of UCLA in Norman. So, yes, a valid question is: Why in the name of Boomer Sooner did the Bruins keep kicking to him? Perkins' final touchdown came with 2:39 to play in the game.

Perkins also broke the NCAA record for punt return yards (277), a mark previously held by the late Golden Richards, who had 219 punt return yards in 1971 against North Texas while playing for BYU. Perkins, a cornerback for Bob Stoops' OU teams, finished his college career with eight punt returns for touchdowns.

8. Marcus Allen's amazing run

After coming to USC as a defensive back and playing some as a fullback early in his career, Marcus Allen did things in his 1981 senior year that not even Sanders accomplished in his record-setting 1988 season.

For starters, Allen rushed for more than 200 yards in eight of 11 games (Sanders had seven 200-yard games in '88) and finished with 2,342 yards on his way to winning the Heisman Trophy. But what really jumps out is that Allen started the season with five straight 200-yard games, a streak that seems surreal 44 years later.

In many ways, Allen is the most accomplished football player ever. He's the only player to win a national championship, Heisman Trophy, Super Bowl championship, Super Bowl MVP award and NFL MVP award, a distinction that may never be duplicated. He's also both a Pro Football and College Football Hall of Famer.

9. Patrick Mahomes' wizardry

Before he started collecting Super Bowl rings with the Kansas City Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes played a starring role in one of the wildest shootouts in college football history. Oklahoma and Baker Mayfield outlasted Texas Tech and Mahomes 66-59 in 2016, an offensive smorgasbord that produced one record after another.

Playing through a separated throwing shoulder and fractured left wrist he suffered in the first half, Mahomes set an FBS record with 819 yards of total offense. He completed 52 of 88 passes for 734 yards and five touchdowns and also rushed for 85 yards and two touchdowns.

Mayfield, who had transferred from Texas Tech to Oklahoma, had the "lesser" of the stats between the two future NFL quarterbacks that day. He threw for only 545 yards and seven touchdowns -- but got the win. The teams combined for an FBS-record 1,708 yards of offense. "To have both those guys play the way they did ... We'll never see it again, I don't think," said Kliff Kingsbury, who was Texas Tech's head coach that season.

10. No upsetting Nick Saban

Nick Saban won a slew of games against nationally ranked teams during his career, 104 to be exact, but his streak of beating the teams he was supposed to beat during his 17 seasons at Alabama was unmatched. The Crimson Tide won 100 consecutive games against unranked foes under Saban and went 14 years without losing a game to an unranked opponent, a streak that was snapped by a 41-38 loss to 19-point underdog Texas A&M on Oct. 9, 2021 with a walk-off 28-yard field goal by the Aggies' Seth Small. It was the longest such streak in the AP poll era, and Saban was 123-4 overall at Alabama against unranked teams.

The A&M game also marked the first time one of Saban's former assistants (Jimbo Fisher) had beaten him. Saban had been 24-0 against former assistants.

Saban had not lost to an unranked team since his first season at Alabama in 2007, when Louisiana-Monroe upset the Tide 21-14 in Tuscaloosa. The next closest winning streak against unranked teams in the AP poll era (since 1936) is 73 by Florida from 1990 to 2000 under Steve Spurrier. Miami won 72 in a row from 1985 to 1995.

Now that we've ranked the top 10, here are some honorable (and dishonorable) mentions:

• Florida has scored in 461 straight games, the longest active streak and the longest in FBS history. The last time the Gators were shut out in a game was on Oct. 29, 1988, a 16-0 loss to Auburn. A distant second is TCU, which has scored in 407 straight games.

• Houston quarterback Andre Ware passed for 517 yards and six touchdowns -- all in the first half before sitting out the rest of the game -- in a 95-21 battering of NCAA probation-beleaguered SMU in 1989 in the Astrodome. Houston finished with an NCAA-record 1,021 yards of offense. The Mustangs were coming off a two-year NCAA "death penalty" for violating rules and more than half their starters were freshmen. SMU coach Forrest Gregg was furious afterward about Houston running up the score and called it a "sad day for college football." Houston also was on probation that season and wasn't allowed to play in a bowl game or appear on live television, but Ware still won the Heisman Trophy.

• Michigan's Mike Hart had 1,005 consecutive rushing attempts without a losing a fumble from 2004 to 2008. Two of his three career lost fumbles came in his last game, the Capital One Bowl against Florida, which the Wolverines won 41-35.

• Nebraska has sold out every home football game at Memorial Stadium dating back to Nov. 3, 1962, a streak of 403 straight games. The Huskers have suffered through some lean times over the past decade, and while packed stadiums and sellouts aren't necessarily the same thing, every ticket available to the public has been sold for 60-plus years. Admittedly, Nebraska has been forced to get creative to keep the streak alive, with corporations and donors buying up unused tickets at discount prices. But still... 403 straight sellouts!

• Alabama won a record 27 straight games against SEC opponents from 1976 to 1980, a streak that ended with a 6-3 loss to Mississippi State in Jackson, Mississippi on Nov. 1, 1980. That setback to the Bulldogs was the only loss to an SEC opponent Alabama captains Major Ogilvie and Randy Scott had their entire college careers. The Crimson Tide's average margin of victory in the streak was 21.6 points, and only three times in 27 games did their opponent score more than 20. Florida won 25 straight against SEC foes under Spurrier from 1994 to 1997.

• East Carolina's Dominique Davis completed 36 consecutive passes in 2011, completing his last 10 against Memphis and his first 26 the following week against Navy. That broke Aaron Rodgers' record of 26 in a row in 2004 when Rodgers was at Cal.

• Georgia had an NCAA-record 13 turnovers in a 48-6 loss to rival Georgia Tech and Bobby Dodd in 1951. Zeke Bratkowski threw eight interceptions (in 35 attempts) and the Bulldogs lost five fumbles. Bratkowski still holds the SEC record for career interceptions (68), but as a second-year starter in 1952, he led the nation in passing and earned All-America honors before going on to play for the Green Bay Packers following the 1953 season.

• With Chris Klieman in his third season as coach, North Dakota State allowed just three punt returns in 14 games for a net total of zero yards in 2016. Of North Dakota State's 61 punts that season, 37 were fair catches.

• Northwestern lost 34 straight games from 1979 to 1982. The closest any school has come to that futility is New Mexico State dropping 27 in a row from 1988 to 1990.

• Vanderbilt went the entire season in 1993 without a single touchdown pass, the last FBS team to do so. The Commodores' only SEC win that season was 12-7 over Kentucky. They ran the I-bone option offense under Gerry DiNardo and attempted 157 passes with no touchdowns and 13 interceptions. Three different quarterbacks played that season, and the Commodores attempted a total of 17 passes in their four wins.

• Wake Forest's Nick Sciba holds the NCAA record with 34 consecutive made field goals in the 2018 and 2019 seasons. He made his first 23 attempts in 2019 before missing from 48 yards in the regular-season finale against Syracuse.

• With 6,405 yards in 54 games, San Diego State's Donnel Pumphrey broke Ron Dayne's NCAA career rushing record in 2016. Dayne had 6,397 in 43 games at Wisconsin. It's hard to imagine a player putting up those numbers -- and taking the beating a running back does -- and staying four years in the current climate of college football to make a run at Pumphrey's record.