The Decade's Decently Dominant

Here's the all-decade teams, rated 31-65 in the Dominance Ranking.

(rank, team, average Dominance Rank, 2000-2009)
31. Southern Miss. 40.20
32. Northern Ill. 40.60
33. Georgia Tech 41.10
34. California 41.60
35. Wisconsin 42.40
36. Fresno St. 44.10
37. Kansas St. 44.30
38. Cincinnati 44.80
39. Arkansas 45.40
40. Air Force 45.80
41. Brigham Young 46.20
42. Purdue 47.60
43. Missouri 47.70
44. Bowling Green 50.20
45. Toledo 50.50
46. Arizona St. 51.70
46. Minnesota 51.70
48. Maryland 52.10
49. South Carolina 52.70
50. Hawaii 53.10
51. Oklahoma St. 53.30
52. Notre Dame 53.50
53. North Carolina St. 54.00
54. Troy 54.38
55. Navy 54.40
56. Michigan St. 55.30
57. Mississippi 55.90
58. Texas A&M 57.90
59. UCLA 58.00
60. Virginia 58.30
61. Middle Tenn. 59.70
62. Rutgers 61.00
63. Tulsa 61.60
64. Memphis 61.80
65. UCF 62.50

Among these middle-of-the-packers, one can find teams that have managed to string together several really great seasons in a row, like BYU's last four years, Cincinnati's last threeand Kansas State's early decade seasons. However, in each of those team's cases-- and with all of the teams shown here-- there are some real duds in the mix, too. BYU in 2001-2003 was just awful, ranking as low as 91st (2002). Kansas State and Cincinnati have lower lows than BYUs (94th, 107th, respectively).

So it goes for most of the list: for these teams, the good years were the exception, even if there were a few of them. Bowling Green had four top-20 finishes to start the decade, fell below 100 in '06, and has yet to climb above 65th since. Maryland finished in the top 10 three years running to start the decade, but ranked 109th last year, and is itching to get rid of its coach. Rutgers, Ole Miss, Memphis, Minnesota, Fresno State, and Cal all have similar, if less stark, runs.