NCAA thoughts

Years ago, and I mean roughly ten or so years ago, I was thinking about what college would be most likely to win both the men's and women's NCAA basketball championship in the same year. It hadn't been done at that point and so I put some thought into it and decided that Duke would have the best chances of doing it. Fast forward to 2004 and it actually turns out UConn became the first to do it.
Fast forward again to last spring. I got to thinking about how Texas had just won the football championship and how they had a men's bball team with a pretty high ranking. So I began a "thought exercise" which would actually occupy my brain for way too many hours. I began to think about which schools would be likely to win the football and (men's) basketball titles in the same year. (I decided that the order of titles really shouldn't matter since it's arguable which season actually comes "first".)
I don't know if it's ever been done before, and frankly I don't really care. I'm concerned about who would be most likely to do it in the (near) future. That is, who would be the first to do it from this point on.
Here are some thoughts I had:

1) It's a shame Duke is so bad at football. They are probably the team with the best chances to win in basketball in this era and yet have virtually no chance to win the football title. Likewise, many other top bball teams have a similar situation; UConn, Kansas, North Carolina are the cream of the basketball crop and yet Carolina is the only one to have even one good football year that I can remember.
Football obviously has a similar situation, with teams like Penn State, but I think it's more pronounced with more teams for basketball dominance.

2)There's LIKELY, there's Likely and there's "likely".
There are a number of schools that can qualify as legitimate contenders in both sports. They're not too hard to think of, they're the big schools in the big conferences usually. But because of the enormity of the feat, there are really a select few that seem to really have a shot and a collection of others that are contenders but not quite at the same level. Take a few schools from the big ten as examples. Michigan and Michigan State, while not always good in both sports at the same time, are actually among the elite overall. Michigan has won both titles in my lifetime, and Michigan State has won the bball title once in my lifetime and gotten quite close a handful of times. Plus, while not extremely great in football, they are usually pretty good. The next level down would be schools like Wisconsin. Wisconsin is almost perennially a top 25 football team recently and have made the final four once in my lifetime and made some legitimate tournament runs, but a national championship in either would be unbelievable enough. Both in the same year might be a bit of a stretch. The other category of "contenders" would be a school like Iowa. They are the kind of school that has a solid program in both sports, so they are among the schools with a shot at the double, but one title would be unlikely enough. Two titles would be almost unimaginable.

3) There are long term contenders that currently aren't really contenders. If you think about "who would be the next team to do it," there are obviously some teams that could do it within the next couple years, but the odds aren't really that great for anyone to do it, so the next school to do it could easily be a school that isn't great now, but regularly is very good. So a history of excellence does count a little bit toward your chances of being the team to accomplish this, even if you're not great now. (I'm not really concerned with this aspect of it for now though.)

4) Since the sports are staggered, there's always going to be a school with one leg completed, so unless they are just complete duds in the other sport, they would likely be at or near the top of the list for "most likely to hold both titles."

Now to actually ranking them.

So last spring, Texas was obviously the football champion and they had a #2 seed in the tournament for Basketball. They were the clear cut #1 in my mind. So the real question was, "who would be the next most likely?"
I'm no expert in college athletics, but what I did know was that Ohio State was also having a good bball year, plus they were likely to open the football season at #1, PLUS they were expecting the top recruit in basketball next year, Greg Oden. To me, that qualified them as #2 pretty easily. Obviously the question would be who is #3 then? After much consideration (and remember, this is pre-tournament) I decided that if I were making the list, I would put Florida in the three spot. I was planning on writing about all of this back then, on this very website, but like most of my ideas, I never got around to it. Anyway, I imagined that me picking Florida would actually draw a bit of criticism at that point. But in my mind, Urban Meyer would probably have a good team in the next few years, and Billy Donovan was a good coach and maybe Florida could win the tournament one year pretty soon. Of course, Florida actually went on to win that very tournament, exceeding my own high expectations for them.

Anyway, I am not really bringing this all up to toot my own horn for vague, unnanounced predictions. I do bring it up because today, in a matter of hours from when I am typing this, Florida will take the football field ranked #2 in the nation with a chance to be one step closer to that second national championship. Obviously, the current rankings in this 2 championship pursuit have to have Florida at the top. Ohio State, by the way, hasn't faltered and actually is #1 in football and thus easily gets my #2 ranking for the "deuce" now as well. Granted, they're not a lock to be great in basketball, but they certainly should be one of the top teams. Which brings me to my point: This is kind of exciting. I mean, first of all, Florida is in relatively really good shape to get the two "biggest" NCAA titles at one time. And if they don't, Ohio State looks like they have a decent shot, granted it's a relative "decent shot", at contending for both titles. I'm excited, ok interested, to see how it turns out.

P.S. Maybe you feel like I just wasted your time. Hopefully not. If you want, you can submit your suggestions for the current #3 team. Here are some possible candidates: LSU, Texas, Louisville, Tennessee, California, UCLA, Wisconsin, Michigan, Boston College...