Has there ever been a program so dominant in sports? Let’s look at their level of dominance the past 3 seasons; 2007 they went 36-2 and lost 14 total sets, and won a National Championship, in 2008 they went 38-0 and only lost 2 sets all year (in the semi’s of the NCAA tourney to Nebraska), and won a National Championship, so far in 2009, they are 36-0 and only have lost 5 sets.
Now, they have won 100 matches in a row and with a win on Saturday night, they will win their third straight National Championship. I am no sports historian, but a 100 wins in a row in this day and age, where there is so much parody in sports seems unimaginable. Ok, they need to get to 138 straight wins to beat the 137 straight match victories by Miami men's tennis from 1957-1964.
But are you really going to put the type of competition teams face into today’s college sports, with some team of rich kids playing tennis back in the 50’s and 60’s. How many schools even had tennis teams back then? I really can’t imagine the competition was that fierce, not like today. And I know everyone is going to bring up the UCLA men’s basketball team, who won 10 National Championships in 12 years from 1963-1975 and did win 88 straight games.
Remember though, in the NCAA tourney in those days you only had to 3 or 4 games to get thru a bracket of around 25 teams and claim and National Championship (Women’s Volleyball has a bracket of 64 teams). And again, there were no recruiting rules to speak of, so you could build your team with as many good players as you want, regardless who played, thus depleting the rest of the competition ability to build a team/program.
I think there is no doubt if you take everything into consideration including parody of competition, recruiting rules, level of competition, strength of today’s athlete, etc, this Penn State women’s volleyball program is the most dominant program in sports history (now of course they have to win on Saturday night to solidify that statement).
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