Commentary | FSU's streak impressive, but far off the best
Winning streaks mean different things to different people, but Southeast High and Oklahoma are in a class by themselves.
The streaks are like the people who make them: They take on a life of their own and can determine legacies of all sorts.
They can even change the way we look at history.
Take Florida State's 29-game streak ended by Oregon in the college football semifinal playoff game.
Some in the media have called it the second-longest win streak in the modern era, eclipsing an important part of college football history on a whim.
Others have downplayed its significance, pointing out that it was built primarily off the weak sisters that compose the ACC.
Streaks travel in different circles from high school through the pros, regardless of the sport.
Here in Manatee County, the Southeast girls basketball program arguably owns the rights to impressive win streaks under John Harder.
The Seminoles twice won 38 straight games, the last streak ending earlier this season. They also won 72 straight games against county opponents until losing to Lakewood Ranch in 2006.
But Southeast also is a streak-breaker of note. In 2004, the Seminoles ended the 120-game winning streak the Jacksonville Ribault girls had amassed over Florida teams.
Before a proliferation of bowl games began scorching our planet and clouded the minds of some, Oklahoma rightfully held the NCAA record for most consecutive victories by a major college football program with 47 straight from 1953 to 1957.
Some have pushed that out of college football's modern era in a flawed attempt to change history.
The streak began when the Sooners beat archrival Texas 19-14 in October 1953 and ended in November 1957, when Notre Dame came into Norman and defeated the Sooners 7-0.
What would baseball be if folks declared 1957 as the borderline between the baseball's modern era and the archaic past.
It could no longer be argued that the 1927 Yankees are the best baseball team in major league history; Babe Ruth would be looked at in the same way as Paul Bunyan, and Ted Williams would no longer be the last .400 hitter because he did it in 1941.
A lot of talk about FSU's 29-game win streak has ignored the 35 games the University of Toledo won from 1969 through '71, when it captured three straight Mid-American Conference titles and finished 12th in the final 1970 Associated Press poll and 14th in the '71 poll.
Chuck Ealey was the quarterback all three seasons and became the first player in MAC history to receive Heisman votes. He is the only starting quarterback in major college football history to go 35-0.
Toledo's great run ranks behind some streaks that you could argue don't qualify for the modern era: Washington (39 straight) from 1908-1914; and Yale, which had two winning streaks of 37 (1887-89) and 1890-93.
Oklahoma's 47-game streak is one of the greatest feats in major college football, and the Sooners have the distinction of holding three of the top seven win streaks in NCAA football history.
The Sooners won 31 straight from 1948 through 1950 and 28 in a row under Barry Switzer (1973-75), who ran his football program with booze, guns and suitcases filled with free-get-of-jail cards.
Miami won 34 straight from 2000-03, and Texas won 30 consecutive games under Darrell Royal from '68 through 70, further distorting those FSU fanatics who see what they want to see and forget what they want to forget.
Maybe it's part of the mentality in Tallahassee, which has demonstrated anything that takes away from the FSU football program never really happened.
Alan Dell, Herald sports writer, can be reached at 941-745-7056. Follow him on Twitter @ADellSports.
This story was originally published January 10, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Commentary | FSU's streak impressive, but far off the best."