Associate Professor of Communication Robert Lemieux spends every Saturday glued to the tube, watching college football. And when he’s not watching it, he’s talking about it.

“College football is one of those sports with an enduring debate – who is the best,” says Lemieux. “My argument is that a team’s rank at the end of the season is the best measurement of success, along with the percentage of time it has been ranked.”

As a professor who normally deals with relational and health communication, Lemieux isn’t a stranger to initiating research questions or testing hypotheses. This project, however, dealt with a slightly different subject: finding a concrete way to rank Division 1-A teams.

Lemieux dug back in the records to 1936, the year the AP started its sportswriter rankings. In 1950, United Press International began coaches rankings, which were later taken over by USA Today.

Lemieux came up with a cumulative score for each of the 94 schools listed by finding the average rank for each team each year and then dividing it by the percentage of years the team has been ranked. For example, if a team was ranked number one for 71 years, its cumulative score would be 1, putting it at the top of the list.

The big winner was the University of Oklahoma. The college was ranked 68 percent of the time, with an average ranking of 7.18. The biggest surprise was Boise State, at number 20. The university entered the scene only in the last decade, but scored high because it was consistently ranked.

Lemieux’s rankings show how good each team has been historically. But don’t expect the heated football debate to stop anytime soon.

“Just because you’re historically good isn’t associated with what happens from Saturday to Saturday,” says Lemieux. “Let the argument begin, or should I say, continue.”

See the complete rankings here.

Read an article about Lemieux’s rankings written by USA Today.