Oregon has an opportunity to do something no other team in major college football has accomplished, but making history is never easy.
Three wins separate the Ducks from a national title, a 16-0 record and a spot in the record book as the first FBS team to win 16 games in the last 130 years. The question is whether they are prepared for the wear and tear of the elongated schedule, a challenge the eight remaining teams face in the playoff also face but only Oregon can punctuate with an undefeated record.
"The real challenge in there has been for me to make sure that I'm keeping our players fresh and our team ready," said Oregon coach Dan Lanning, "but our guys are really up to the mental challenge. We've got a mature team."
Sport science can only go so far to prepare a team for the rigorous schedule. Take it from the coaches who faced similar workloads in the past at the FCS and Division III levels.
Their advice: if you're only preparing now for the additional workload in December, you're already too late. Cutting back on practice time, padded practices and individual drills is a process that must begin in September to be best prepared for the grind of December.
North Dakota State's 2019-20 team is the only other team in the FBS or FCS to record a 16-0 record since Yale did it in 1894, when the sport hardly resembled the fast-paced, hard-hitting format today.
Matt Entz was in his first year leading the FCS powerhouse, and was always "on edge," he said. He was involved in every facet of the program because, "I didn't want to screw it up or miss something or assume something was being taken care of."
That meant monitoring the workload on players, resulting in more walkthrough sessions than practices, particularly near the end of the regular season. He extended breaks for players, who sometimes didn't return to campus for practices after a holiday until 8 p.m. on a Monday.
"At some point it's the mental makeup of your team and they need an opportunity to step away from ball for longer than 24 hours," said Entz, now the head coach at Fresno State.
Entz's predecessor, Chris Klieman, coached North Dakota State to four national titles in five years, including a 16-game season that ended with a 15-1 record and a title in 2014. Tracking player movement, speed, acceleration and workload through wearable sports technology like Catapult, a common tool utilized at major college programs today, were not an option at the time. So, he scaled practices, removed shoulder pads on Wednesdays and cut back on starter-on-starter drills.
"The modalities for recovery are 10 times better now than they were," Klieman said. "It was something you needed to be intentional about."
That also meant studying body language on game film, and sometimes assigning tangibles to the intangible.
"I'd flip on the game from end of September to end of October, end of November and look at some of our key older guys and see that one kid is not moving as well on the video, so I'd taper it back for that kid to make sure he's fresh for this string of playoff games," Klieman said. "You trusted those kids. I'd bring in those older kids in a group and ask how they're feeling, tell them my plan for Tuesday and Wednesday, and they were awesome in giving feedback."
Dorms and the campus cafeteria closed during the fall break at North Dakota State, forcing players to seek temporary housing and meals.
"There was a lot more stress on those kids back in the mid-2010s," Klieman said. "Very rarely did you see a team in the FCS that didn't get a bye in the playoffs make it to the championship. That's going to be interesting to see how that plays out this year."
The FCS playoffs' formatting has changed several times, but it currently awards first-round byes to eight teams in the 24-team field. The FCS has rewarded byes for a total of 18 seasons dating back to the 1980s. Only four teams who played an extra game via the first round have reached the national championship game, and only one (Georgia Southern in 1985) has won the title.
Workload is on the minds of coaches at every level of football. Kansas' Lance Liepold led Wisconsin-Whitewater to six Division III national titles in eight years, which included five 15-0 seasons spanning between 2007 and 2014. He, too, reduced workloads and conducted full-pad practices only once a week.
Late in the season, individual periods at practices shrunk from four minutes to three minutes, and other periods were reduced by 30 seconds to curtail fatigue.
"Unfortunately that means your special teams and scout teams, and your second-team units, get their reps reduced," he said.
Liepold also milked the game clock in big wins to cut down on "pure snaps" late in the season, when possible.
"Once you got into the playoffs, you could see the guys were re-energized and had a new focus," Liepold said. "I was always impressed with that."
For Oregon, there's something to learn from the past, even with the fancy new gadgets and multi-million dollars worth of sports science research at their disposal. Lanning said he has leaned on his strength and sports science staff to prepare players for the extended schedule.
"I'm proud to say that several of our players are hitting some of their highest testing numbers," Lanning said this week. "We have guys hitting [personal records] in the weight room. I think it's unique at this point in the season, but it speaks to how we've been able to adapt and adjust some of our performance throughout the year to make sure that we continue to stay fresh."
Oregon's first test in the quarterfinals might be the toughest draw in the field: a rematch against Ohio State at the Rose Bowl. The Ducks held on for a 32-31 win in the regular season after rallying and then holding Ohio State out of field-goal range in the final moments. That game was in the friendly confines of Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon.
When Ohio State drilled Tennessee in the first round last week to set up a rematch with the Ducks, Entz immediately was reminded of a similar situation he faced in 2019 at North Dakota State. The Bison blew out Illinois State 37-3 on the road in the regular season, and were set to face the Redbirds two months later in the FCS quarterfinals -- and at home at the Fargodome as the undefeated No. 1 seed in the field. It was set up perfectly for NDSU to cruise into the semifinals.
Illinois State had other plans. NDSU struggled in the red zone and settled for field goals. The Bison held on for a 9-3 win to advance to the semifinals, a far cry from the 34-point blowout they handed the Redbirds on the road earlier that year.
"That goes back to telling your guys that your team is the most important thing, and that you have a faceless opponent," Entz said. "You're always trying to get them back to their execution and effort. It's hard when they're 18 to 22 years old. They feel like they're on top of the world and playing their best football, but other teams get better and teams change. It's the playoffs and if you don't take the right approach, it could set you up for failure.
Winningest undefeated teams in college football history
| Team | Record | Division |
|---|---|---|
| 1894 Yale | 16-0 | |
| 2019 North Dakota State | 16-0 | FCS |
| 2018 Clemson | 15-0 | FBS |
| 2019 LSU | 15-0 | FBS |
| 2019 North Dakota State | 15-0 | FCS |
| 2022 Georgia | 15-0 | FBS |
| 2023 Michigan | 15-0 | FBS |
| 2002 Ohio State | 14-0 | FBS |
| 2009 Alabama | 14-0 | FBS |
| 2009 Boise State | 14-0 | FBS |
| 2010 Auburn | 14-0 | FBS |
| 2013 Florida State | 14-0 | FBS |
A win is a win. Even Yale wasn't always perfect during that season in 1894, when between 20,000 to 30,000 people descended on the Polo Grounds in New York, with snow on the ground and a cold rain pouring from the sky, to watch the Bulldogs face Princeton at the end of the season. With police on sight, ready to arrest players if bones were broken, neither team looked impressive in the December muck.
"It was, without doubt, the poorest exhibition of football ever given by any two of the major colleges since the game has been reduced to a science," according to one reporter's dispatch in The Philadelphia Times.
Yale won 24-0 to cap its perfect season, unknowingly pinning the university atop the record book for the next 130 years -- and counting.
Times and circumstances have changed, and the level of competition may differ, but not the challenges.
"It's all relative," surmised Entz. "Kids are kids."
