What’s the most remarkable active winning streak in college sports?
Clemson’s 29 straight wins in football? No, that one’s gone. (And don’t forget that Oklahoma once won 47 in a row — and that was back when teams played only 11 games each year instead of 15.) North Carolina’s 59 straight home basketball wins against Clemson? No, that streak’s over also. The Duke basketball team’s unbeaten-since-2000 streak against non-conference opponents at home? Nope. Finished. Connecticut’s 98 wins in a row at home in women’s college basketball? No, that one got Baylor-ed.
The most incredible active winning streak — one that, after it ends, will never be duplicated — is this:
Stanford has won at least one NCAA national championship in some sport every year since the 1975-1976 academic year. That’s at least one NCAA title each year for the last 44 years. Think about that. Every year for 44 years, you have to have on your campus the country’s best team in some sport — a team that’s good enough to win a national championship — a tournament, a meet, a world series — and then deliver that win against the very best other schools — not just in your conference — but from around the country — under the pressure of a national title game, match, meet. And never once fail in 44 years.
The most national titles ever won by a single school in a single academic year is 6. Stanford has won 6 NCAA championships in one year twice — during the 1995-1996 academic year and again in the 2018-2019 academic year. No other school has ever come close to doing that even once.
It’s hard to win an NCAA championship in any sport. We’re most aware of that when we watch the NCAA basketball tournament each March. How often does the best team — the top seed — lose early and get sent home without its expected championship? Nearly every year. It’s just as hard in baseball, soccer, volleyball, tennis, swimming. It’s so hard that no school — other than Stanford — has done it consistently.
There are only 8 schools that have won more than 44 national championships in the history of college sports — Stanford (126), UCLA (118), USC (not the one in South Carolina) (107), Penn State (51), Texas (47), and North Carolina (45) are some of them. And here are some schools that have been around since the beginning of college sports, and which would like you to think of them as sports powerhouses, that in all that time have never won 40 NCAA championships: Florida (36), Michigan (35), Oklahoma (31), Ohio State (29), Alabama (27), Wisconsin (25), Notre Dame (19), and Duke (17).
College sports are too competitive. It’s just too hard to win even one NCAA championship. No school can imagine winning a championship 4 years in a row. No school will ever again win one every year for 44 years. It’s just not possible.
