Picking the Defining Team of Every Decade of College Football
Split Zone Duo: College Football Podcast
Richard Johnson and Alex Kirshner
4.9 • 916 Ratings
🗓️ 3 July 2025
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For the Fourth of July, we look all the way back to the founding of … college football. Richard and Alex pick and debate the defining teams of each decade of the sport’s history, starting with one year of the 1860s and rolling through the 2010s. Remember that “defining team” is usually complimentary, but not always. Without spoiling any of the discussion, this show features:
* Rutgers vs. Princeton for the crown of the 1860s
* Yale’s case against everybody for the later 1800s
* Why Michigan’s 1900s was even more impressive than you think
* Georgia Tech vs. the advent of the forward pass in the 1910s
* That classic college football matchup: Alabama vs. Cal, for the ‘20s
* Someone likes Pitt for the 1930s, and it’s not Alex
* Did the 1940s belong to Army and Navy, or did they belong to the school that best manipulated the rules meant to help people from the army and navy?
* Why there will never be another program like 1950s Oklahoma, ever
* A curveball for the ‘60s, but definitely not for the ‘70s
* Penn State vs. SMU for the ‘80s
* A brutal Nebraska vs. Florida State vs. Miami vs. Florida race for the ‘90s
* In the 2000s, a chance to go off the beaten path instead of just picking Florida or USC: Will we take it?
* No need to complicate the 2010s
This is a subscriber episode of Split Zone Duo.
Everyone can listen to a free preview of this show, and we offer weeklong free trials if you want to try us out. It’s a great time of year to do it, and you can get a month free with an annual subscription.
Thank you for listening, and we hope you have a great holiday weekend.
Producer: Anthony Vito
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | We're coming, and we ain't backing down. |
| 0:01.9 | We don't need a bunch of cats in here, looking in the mirror. |
| 0:04.5 | Everybody just do your job. |
| 0:06.7 | You understand that? |
| 0:07.7 | Hey, were you shut up? |
| 0:08.6 | I'm bitterly disappointed with the officiating today. |
| 0:11.1 | Guys being dudes. |
| 0:12.3 | And they run through our like, like through a ten horn, man. |
| 0:14.7 | Ah, fuck it. |
| 0:16.5 | Thank you, Lee. |
| 0:18.2 | Alex, we do a lot of talk about the history of the game, but I think one of the things |
| 0:25.2 | that we haven't done is we haven't drawn a complete through line through the history of |
| 0:32.7 | the sport. |
| 0:33.0 | I think a lot of times we drop in on a decade or we drop in on a team and take them through their |
| 0:38.7 | whole life cycle. But I don't think we've really done the ties that bind the sport throughout |
| 0:43.2 | every decade that they've done it, 150 odd years of it. So let's do that here today. We're |
| 0:50.9 | talking teams that defined each decade going all the way back we will uh for brevity's sake |
| 0:58.2 | combined the 1860s and the 1870s so alex my co-host will we oh we we will we will i am at least |
| 1:06.4 | i didn't agree to that at all oh okay well i i have one team for the 1860s and the 1870s. |
| 1:13.3 | So let's start at the birthplace because that's my, we have not compared notes. |
| 1:19.4 | We do not know which each, which, what team each host will bring to each decade. |
| 1:25.8 | But I am starting at the birthplace, New York City's |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 14 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Richard Johnson and Alex Kirshner, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Richard Johnson and Alex Kirshner and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.