Nebraska is one of the top ten teams on the AP Poll’s all-time list. It’s still list season, even with fall camp just a couple days away. Today the Associated Press released rankings taking into account the past 80 years, or since 1936, the year in which the AP poll started and is considered by most college football historians to be the first year of “the modern football era”.*
The AP awarded a point for every appearance that a school had in a weekly ranking, an additional point for every #1 ranking, and a full 10 points for every AP national championship. NOTE: AP NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP. Not every national championship ever, so Alabama doesn’t get to claim 63 national titles.
Your top ten:
Ohio State
Oklahoma
Notre Dame
Alabama
USC
Nebraska
Michigan
Texas
Florida State
Florida
Note that they list Nebraska as having four national championships. (BLASPHEMERS!!!!) The year that we did not get a national title is 1997 when the media decided to give it to Michigan because they hadn’t won a title since 1948.
Check out these items from the Nebraska profile:

Best full decade: 1990s appeared in 100% of polls.
Worst full decade: 1950s appeared in 5.17% of polls.
Mostly under coach Tom Osborne, the Cornhuskers were unranked in only three polls combined during the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s _ appearing in 99.35 percent over three decades.

The 1950s were bad for Nebraska because the state lost so many men drafted into World War II that didn’t return to the state when they came back from the war. It took a while to recover, and to find the right coach in Bob Devaney.
The Big Ten has five schools in the Top 20 – Ohio State, Nebraska, Michigan, Penn State, and Michigan State.
There’s a lot more information at the AP site (link above), so get over there, take a gander, then come back here and rejoice, complain, wonder, and discuss.
Rutgers is the lowest rated Power 5 program, below Kansas at 63 and Kansas State at 44. Boy that Bill Snyder sure can coach.
*Note that “modern football era” changes a lot depending upon whom you’re talking to. For some historians, the 1920s would be considered the “golden age of college football”, and real history would be the years 1890-1910. In Nebraska, it might mean since 1962 or the arrival of Bob Devaney. Keep that in mind.

Source: Corn Nation