The origin of this article was a question on my weekly Tiger-Eye Review post from TET member Zotus. He asked if I could run some numbers on the ‘Running Back U” claim by many NCAA institutions to see if there was any validity to Auburn’s claim.
This is what I found.
There have been countless discussions about individually famous running backs, either in the NFL or in college. Here are a few sample links to articles.
https://n.rivals.com/news/running-back-u-five-schools-stake-their-claim
https://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2016/05/wheres_running_back_u_let_the.html
The problem I’ve found with many of these is they concentrate on athletes who were either individually successful both in college and the NFL, but skip the consistency that many schools have show within the NCAA for all running backs, whether they later became famous or not.