Which colleges put together the best football and basketball seasons combined?
There are still college championships to be won this year, but the two traditional revenue-generating sports – football and men’s basketball – are now complete. It’s hard to have success in one of those. It’s much more difficult to be very good in both.
In this edition of Sensational Sports Sevens, we rank the major college sports programs that produced the best combined football and basketball results this year. An interesting note is that only six school finished the season ranked in both basketball and football (Alabama, Tennessee, Arizona, Clemson, Kansas and North Carolina State).
Let’s get to the rankings.
7. Kansas Jayhawks (ranked 23 in football, 19 in basketball): The Kansas basketball team was riddled by injuries, which helps explain how the Jayhawks were one fortuitous foul call away from facing elimination against Samford in the first round of the NCAA Tournament then lost to Gonzaga in the next round. They will be back as strong as ever. But the progress on the football field is what has fans in Lawrence most excited. The Jayhawks won nine games last season under Lance Leipold, the most underrated coach in the country.
6. Clemson Tigers (ranked 20 in football, 14 in basketball): The Tigers’ March Madness run came up one win shy of the school’s first Final Four. The near miss was particularly painful because the Tigers had won at Alabama during the regular season. A down year for Dabo Swinney and the Clemson football team still included nine wins and a top-20 ranking.