2026 games

Hostile Territory — every head coach's true road record against AP top-10 teams since 1990, one chip per game.

How Many Rings? — every person on a national-championship staff since 1990, ranked by rings, each one cited.

All-time FBS records — all 136 programs ranked by total wins, win percentage and bowl record.

If a streak from this page ends up in your article, broadcast, podcast or thread, please cite it: name the site and link to the streak where sensible; the url encodes the streak's definition into it.

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• Window: 1936–2026, from the first AP poll, 63,855 games.
• Teams: The teams are this season's FBS teams. There was no FBS before 1978; before then a team counts in the seasons James Howell lists it as a 'major' college program. A team's games count only from its latest move up (Temple's from 1971, Appalachian State's from 2014).
• Streak Rules:
  • A game qualifies when it matches every word in the definition. Non-qualifying games neither extend nor break a streak — “hasn't lost to Auburn since 1998” stays alive through seasons they don't play.
  • Ties (pre-1996) end winning and losing streaks; an undefeated streak counts wins and ties.
  • A game a team doesn’t play neither extends nor breaks a run, the same as a game that doesn’t qualify, which is how the record book has always counted it. Two kinds of postseason go unplayed, and they deserve different treatment. When the team itself turned a game down — a declined bid, a school’s standing no-bowl policy, a self-imposed ban — the streak carried on without being put at risk, and a reader can decide what that is worth. The longest winning streaks that lived through a bowl the team chose not to play, each with its source:
    • Army, 25 straight (1944–1946): 1944, National champion Army (9–0) did not take bowl bids in this era; wartime West Point played no postseason games. [school no-bowl policy, thinly sourced] 1945, National champion Army (9–0) did not take bowl bids in this era; West Point stayed out of postseason games. [school no-bowl policy, thinly sourced]
    • Notre Dame, 21 straight (1946–1948): 1946, Notre Dame’s no-bowl policy, in force from 1925 through the 1968 season, kept the national champion Irish (8–0–1) home. [school no-bowl policy] 1947, Notre Dame’s no-bowl policy, in force from 1925 through the 1968 season, kept the national champion Irish (9–0) home. [school no-bowl policy]
    • Rutgers, 18 straight (1975–1976): 1976, Unbeaten Rutgers turned down the first Independence Bowl, feeling snubbed by the bigger bowls. [declined a bowl bid]
    • Army, 17 straight (1949–1950): 1949, Unbeaten Army (9–0) stayed home under West Point’s stance against postseason games, announced in 1948. [school no-bowl policy, thinly sourced]
    • Notre Dame, 15 straight (2025–now): 2025, Notre Dame refused an invitation to the Pop-Tarts Bowl after being left out of the 2025 playoff. [declined a bowl bid]
    • Penn State, 15 straight (1970–1971): 1970, Penn State turned down the Peach Bowl, which took Arizona State instead. [declined a bowl bid]
    • Wyoming, 13 straight (1955–1957): 1956, Wyoming turned down the Sun Bowl hoping for a better bid, and none came. [declined a bowl bid]
    • North Carolina, 13 straight (1947–1948): 1947, Passed over by the Orange Bowl, North Carolina (8–2) turned down several smaller bowls, including the Legion Bowl in Los Angeles; the faculty athletic committee said the season had been long enough. [declined a bowl bid]
    • Rutgers, 12 straight (1960–1961): 1960, Rutgers then turned down all bowl bids as a matter of university policy (stated the next season); 8–1 Rutgers played no bowl. [school no-bowl policy, thinly sourced] 1961, Rutgers officials said university policy was to turn down every bowl bid, so 9–0 Rutgers stayed home. [school no-bowl policy]
    • Pittsburgh, 12 straight (1937–1938): 1937, National champion Pitt’s players voted down the Rose, Sugar and Cotton Bowl invitations, still sore over the previous year’s Rose Bowl trip. [declined a bowl bid]
    • Notre Dame, 11 straight (1954–1955): 1954, Notre Dame’s no-bowl policy, in force through the 1968 season, kept the 9–1 Irish home. [school no-bowl policy]
    • Notre Dame, 11 straight (1949–1950): 1949, Notre Dame’s no-bowl policy, in force from 1925 through the 1968 season, kept the national champion Irish (10–0) home. [school no-bowl policy]
    When a rule the team was under kept it home — a conference that barred bowls or allowed only the Rose Bowl, a no-repeat rule, an NCAA ban — the team had no game to turn down, and deserves no criticism for following it. The longest winning streaks that lived through a postseason a rule kept the team out of:
    • Oklahoma, 47 straight (1953–1957): 1954, The Big Seven’s no-repeat rule kept 10–0 Oklahoma out of the Orange Bowl a year after it played there. [conference no-repeat rule] 1956, The Big Seven’s no-repeat rule kept 10–0, top-ranked Oklahoma out of the Orange Bowl. [conference no-repeat rule]
    • Oklahoma, 28 straight (1973–1975): 1973, Oklahoma was on Big Eight Conference probation with a two-year bowl ban for recruiting violations. [conference rule] 1974, Oklahoma was on NCAA probation for recruiting violations and barred from a bowl, yet won the AP title. [NCAA bowl ban]
    • Michigan, 25 straight (1946–1949): 1948, Unbeaten Big Nine champion Michigan (9–0) was barred from returning to the Rose Bowl by the conference’s no-repeat rule, and could play in no other bowl. [conference no-repeat rule]
    • Ohio State, 24 straight (2012–2013): 2012, Ohio State went 12–0 in 2012 under an NCAA bowl ban, so it stayed home; the streak reached 24 the next fall. [NCAA bowl ban]
    • Auburn, 20 straight (1993–1994): 1993, Auburn went 11–0 in 1993 under an NCAA probation that barred it from TV, the SEC title game and any bowl. [NCAA bowl ban]
    • Minnesota, 18 straight (1939–1942): 1940, The Big Ten’s bowl ban, in force until 1946, kept national champion Minnesota (8–0) home. [conference rule] 1941, The Big Ten’s bowl ban, in force until 1946, kept repeat national champion Minnesota (8–0) home. [conference rule]
    • Auburn, 17 straight (1956–1958): 1957, AP national champion Auburn was on NCAA probation for paying recruits and could not play in a bowl. [NCAA bowl ban]
    • SMU, 14 straight (1981–1982): 1981, SMU won the 1981 Southwest Conference at 10–1 but was on NCAA probation and barred from the Cotton Bowl, so it called its finale at Arkansas the "Polyester Bowl." [NCAA bowl ban]
    • Texas A&M, 14 straight (1956–1957): 1956, Southwest Conference champion Texas A&M was on probation and barred from a bowl. [NCAA bowl ban]
    • California, 14 straight (1947–1948): 1947, PCC members could play only in the Rose Bowl, and its lone berth went to champion USC, which had beaten 9–1 Cal. [conference rule]
    • Arizona State, 13 straight (1974–1975): 1974, Under WAC rules only the conference champion took a bowl bid, and 7–5 Arizona State did not win the WAC. [conference rule]
    • West Virginia, 13 straight (1952–1953): 1952, The Southern Conference banned bowl games from 1951, so 7–2 West Virginia stayed home. [conference rule]
  • A winning or losing streak can ask for a margin: “winning by 10+” counts games won by 10 or more, and any other result — a loss or a closer win alike — ends it. The margin is on the outcome, not a condition, because a condition only decides which games count, never what breaks the run.
  • A covering streak counts games where the team beat the closing spread, and a not-covering streak counts games where it didn't: a push ends either, and a game without a line (every game before 1978, and a few after) doesn't count at all.
  • The 40 conditions make 81,611 possible streak definitions, 510,973 counting winning, losing, undefeated, covering, not covering, and winning or losing by 10+ separately; the conditions that take a parameter (a state, conference, opponent, month, team color, or mascot) push that past 142 million.
  • The odds shown are the chance that luck alone produces a streak that long: every team (or, all-time, every place a run could start) gets that many tries at the field's rate.
  • A team's page shows the most interesting streak definitions according to a complicated and imperfect heuristic that takes into account the streak occurring by chance, among other factors. You can read it in the source code if you're so inclined (open a PR if you disagree with me!).
  • 'Power conference' means: the six BCS automatic-qualifying conferences from 1998, the Power 5 from 2014, the Power 4 from 2024.
    • The American gets to count for 2013, because it inherited the Big East's automatic berth.
    • Notre Dame counts as a power conference opponent since power conferences allowed ND to count as such to meet scheduling requirements.
    • Army also met this requirement for the Big Ten and SEC, but not unanimously so it doesn't get the same treatment.
    • The term 'power conference' has no formal meaning before 1998, so older games don't qualify.
  • Full moons are worked out to the minute with Jean Meeus’s lunar-phase method. A game is a werewolf game when the moon is full within a day of 8pm Eastern on game day.
  • A team's regular off-campus home field (Legion Field for Alabama, War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock for Arkansas, and similar) counts as a home game, except in some circumstances like the Iron Bowl.
  • The rate under the streak definition pools today's 136 FBS teams' games, each from that team's side. A game between two of them counts once each way and comes out even; a game against anyone else (an FCS team, a program that has since dropped out) counts once, and FBS teams win most of those. So a condition that favors neither side, like a full moon, can sit a little above 50%. I haven't found a neutral condition that disfavors FBS teams, but would love to hear about one!
• Sources:
  • Scores, sites and closing spreads for 1978–2013 come from Warren Repole's Sunshine Forecast files. His site is gone; the files survive only in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, which is worth a donation. The 78 rows we found wrong and the 38 games the files lack are published as repole-errata, CC0.
  • James Howell's historical scores supply every game before 1978, confirm every 1978–2013 result, and mark conference games before 2009. Howell doesn't say whose home game an off-campus game was; before 1978 a city counts as a team's home field when it played at least 5 regular-season games there against at least 3 opponents.
  • cfbfastR (ESPN) supplies every game from 2014 on, conference games from 2009, and spreads as the median closing line across books.
  • College Poll Archive supplies the AP polls. The AP ranked 20 teams through 1960, 10 in 1961–67, 20 through 1988 and 25 since, and had no preseason poll before 1950, so early-season games from those years can't qualify for a rank word.
  • CollegeFootballData supplies head-coach tenures, halftime scores (2001 on) and time of possession (2004 on).
  • Readers catch what the sources miss. r/CFB's HurricaneRex spotted that Washington State's 2025 games weren't counting as games against a first-year head coach: CFBD credits the bowl to an interim, and his one game fit the season opener just as well, which made Jimmy Rogers look like a mid-season hire. If a streak here looks wrong to you, it might be — say so.