ESPN: 2010 Auburn one of college football’s most unlikely champions
By Jacob Moss
Published:
Whenever the conversation about the best national champions of all time comes up in college football circles, the legendary 2010 Auburn Tigers squad is always brought up, and for very good reason.
Led by Cam Newton — who authored one of the best Heisman seasons and arguably the greatest single-season performance by any player in history — the Tigers completed a perfect 14-0 season to capture their first national title in nearly 50 years.
Everybody knows how iconic this season was for Auburn, though ESPN’s Bill Connelly has another way to describe it: unlikely.
In a piece for ESPN this week, Connelly named that 2010 Auburn squad as one of the 20 most unlikely national championship-winning teams of the past 75 years. He ranked the Newton-led Tigers at No. 9 on his list, and wrote the following:
After more than a half-century without a real title*, Auburn finally achieved another one with one of the most lightning-in-a-bottle seasons in college football history,” Connelly writes. “The Tigers had gone just 13-12 in their two previous seasons, and they would go 11-14 over the next two, but in between they played 14 games with Cam Newton at quarterback and won all of them, seven by just one score. It was one of the more clutch runs we’ll ever see; teams on these types of runs usually falter well before the national title game, but Newton’s Tigers did not.
There’s no denying how great the 2010 Auburn squad was in those tightly contested matchups, and much of that success was due to Newton’s uncanny ability to will his team to victory week after week.
The Tigers may have pulled 7 other national titles out of thin air over the offseason, but nothing will ever top the 2010 title that Newton hoisted through the falling confetti in Glendale.
