Mike Celizic

In college sports, there are football schools and there are basketball schools, and darned seldom is it that the twain ever meet. It is so rare, in fact, that no school in the history of the NCAA has ever simultaneously held championships in both sports; few schools have even had the chance to do it.

That’s because so few schools have what could be called mega-programs that try to dominate not just in one or two sports, but in all sports. Historically, such programs have been concentrated in the Big Ten. Elsewhere, there’s a clear division of talent: UCLA plays basketball, USC plays football; the ACC plays basketball, the SEC plays football, and so on.

And even those schools that play both sports well rarely field great teams in both sports at the same time. It’s not just that no school has held both titles at the same time; few have even had the chance to.

But this year, Florida has a chance. It’s already got the hoops trophy in hand, the first ever for this traditional football school won in April by Billy Donovan’s team. Now, all it has to do is beat top-ranked Ohio State in the BCS Championship game to do what no team has ever done before. And if it could beat Ohio State, it will go into the NCAA Basketball Tournament with a chance to make it three straight major championships.

And, just to make it even more interesting, should Ohio State win, the Buckeyes will roll into March Madness behind all-universe center Greg Oden with its own chance to win both titles.

I don’t think that either the Buckeyes of the Gators are going to use this as motivational fodder. “Win one for the basketball team,” isn’t the sort of catchphrase that’s going to light a fire under a football team.

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Just the same, when it comes to bragging rights, this would be something no school has ever been able to claim before. And they’ve been trying a long, long time.

Someone or other has been awarding football championships since the inaugural season in 1869, when the National Championship Foundation retroactively decided that Princeton’s 1-1 record was better than Rutgers’ 1-1 record and named the Tigers champion. That’s also the only year Rutgers finished second in the country, an accomplishment somewhat dimmed by the fact that only two teams played the game that year.

The Helms Foundation named champions from 1884-1923, after which a host of polls erupted on the game, naming as many as three different champions a year.

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Basketball titles arrived much later on the scene, with the National Invitational Tournament forming in 1938, when Temple won the first title. The next year, the NCAA tournament began, but in the 67 years since, not once has a school held even one of the multiple football titles along with the NCAA hoops crown.

In fact, only seven schools that I could find have even won even one of each championship. Those are: Wisconsin, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Maryland, Arkansas and Syracuse. It’s telling that the first four in that list all belong to the Big Ten, the conference that more than any other emphasizes excellence in all sports.

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When you think about it, that’s remarkable. You’d think that at least once in nearly seven decades, a school would have won both titles, especially since in those 67 years, there’s probably been at least 90 football championships handed out by one polling group or another.

But not only has no school ever done it, but also few schools have even come close. The first near miss was in 1942, when Wisconsin was named champion in one football poll one year after winning the third NCAA Tournament.

Then there was Ohio State, which came as close as anyone ever has. In 1960, the Buckeyes had a sophomore-dominated basketball team that included Jerry Lucas, John Havlicek, Larry Siegried and a kid named Bobby Knight that won the NCAA tournament. The next year, they were expected to repeat, but they lost in overtime to Cincinnati. That fall, the football team claimed the Football Writers Association of America championship, while Alabama won the AP and UPI.

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And now comes Florida, which until Donovan arrived, had never cared much for basketball, not when its school pride was wrapped up in beating Miami and Florida State on the gridiron.

It’s already a mega-program, one that can play both of the NCAA’s most glamorous sports. Now it has a chance to do what no program has ever done before.

What makes it better is that so does Ohio State.

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