Editor’s note: As the World Cup continues in the United States for the first time since 1994, The Athletic is looking back at college sports in the 1990s and how much has changed since then. Join us for a couple of weeks of offseason football and basketball nostalgia.In a decade that included the dying days of the pre-BCS era (it began in 1998), 13 teams were awarded either an AP or coaches poll national championship. But with the benefit of hindsight, several teams that didn’t finish No. 1 were clearly better than some of the teams that did.I tackled this project similarly to when I ranked the 25 best teams of the 2000s last spring. I primarily weighed the following criteria:
Season-long dominance (using average scoring margin)
Big wins (using end-of-season AP poll rankings)
Schedule strength (using College Football Reference’s ratings)
Elite talent (using NFL Draft numbers over a three-year span)
