Factoid 255 - College Football in 1995

In 1995 there were 108 teams in Division 1-A, 18 Bowl games were played, Eddie George (running back for The Ohio State University) won the Heisman, the Florida State Seminoles were the AP preseason number one, and Nebraska won the National Championship.

There were no co-champions in 1995 and no controversy as to who was number one; however, it almost wasn’t like that. Ohio State was ranked 2nd going into its final regular season game vs. Michigan; however, they lost 31 to 23 against Michigan. If they had won that game, rules at the time would not have let them play the only other unbeaten and undefeated team, which was Nebraska.

Nebraska football was at its pinnacle in 1995; they had already won a portion of the national championship the previous two years, but this year they would go undefeated and unchallenged. They went 12-0 under Tom Osbourne that year, a 62 to 24 victory over Florida in the Fiesta Bowl being the icing on the cake. It was both Nebraska’s pinnacle and Tom Osbourne’s as well. Two years later, in 1997, they would go 13-0 and lay claim to another national championship. Over a five year span they laid claim to four National Championships through one selector or another. An unbelievable run!

National Champions

• Nebraska 12–0 Tom Osborne (AP, AS, B(QPRS), BR, CCR, DeS, DuS, ERS, FN, FWAA, MGR, NCF, NFF, NYT, R(FACT), SN, SR, UPI, USAT/CNN) */**

• The Schengen Agreement, which eased cross-border travel, went into effect in several European countries.
• STS-71: Space Shuttle Atlantis docked with the Russian Mir space station for the first time.
• The DVD, an optical disc computer storage media format, was announced.