College football's 10 most-hated teams of all time, ranked (2024)

Must-see TV. Love him or hate him, Johnny Manziel made Texas A&M appointment viewing during the 2012 college football season when he cruised to Heisman honors as the facilitator for Kevin Sumlin's offense. The Aggies played with swagger because of No. 2 and beating Alabama as the world watched in November wasthesignature moment in Manziel's football career. There was something about Manziel's brazen attitude that seemed to rub opposing fans the wrong way. He played the game recklessly at times, which is part of what made him such a unique face of the sport.

The unbeaten 2017 UCF team crowned themselves national champion after beating Auburn — the team that handed thereal national champion, Alabama, its only loss —to kick off a year marketing campaign engineered by former athletic director Danny White. That was a special squad in Orlando, but not one that received its due nationally because of its weak schedule when compared to other top-15 teams. The following season, under first-year coach Josh Heupel, the Knightsweretorched week to week by fans of Power 5 programswhile flexing the nation’s longest winning streak. After every College Football Playoff ranking that season, you’d hear chatter from the Group of 5 ranks on why the Knights were being shafted bythe selection committee. In the end, UCF secured its second consecutive undefeated regular season and second straight American Athletic Conference title before falling to LSU, 40-32, in a top-10 clash in the Fiesta Bowl.

The whistle heard ‘round the world. Miami fans still want an explanation from Terry Porter on what exactly he saw when Hurricanes ballhawk Glenn Sharpe blanketed Buckeyes wideout Chris Gamble in the end zone, only to be calledfor defensive holding to extend the national championship game in overtime. Ohio State wouldeventually win, beating top-ranked Miami, 31-24, to shock the defending national champions. The “Luckeyes” seemed to always have a flair for the dramatic during Jim Tressel’s only national championship season and benefited from several calls — including that big one — to be the last team standing. Freshman Maurice Clarett was Ohio State's star, a trash-talking ballcarrier no one seemed to like in the Big Ten or nationally. He couldn't stay out of trouble and was later dismissed by the university.

He may have reeked of unrefinedarrogance on the field, but Sooners quarterback Baker Mayfield backed it up. And won the Heisman Trophy, no less. The way Oklahoma's record-setting passer carried himself on gamedays made many turn their heads, but he was absolutely a must-watch and the Sooners' brand of a break-neck pace obliterated four top 10 teams on their way to a College Football Playoff berth. Whether you agreed with his pre-game trash talk, in-game crotch grabor post-game flag planting, Mayfield made you pay attention and did not care what anyone outside the program thought of him. College football's bad boyin 2017 is now one of the NFL's top signal callers.

A late-season loss to Boston College squandered a perfect season and national title for the Irish, who were angered after finishing No. 2 behind Bobby Bowden’s Florida State Seminoles — a team Notre Dame beat head-to-head in the ‘Game of the Century’ earlier that season. Lou Holtz let poll voters hear it and the noise indirectly led to the birth of the Bowl Championship Series, a computer-based rankings system used to determine which two teams would play for the national title. Between 1988 and 1993, Notre Dame won 88 percent of its games and became one of America's teams as a national television staple. But the Irish had plenty of enemies.

That 2012 Notre Dame is a close second. The Irish lost by 28 points to Alabama in the national championship and later saw all of its wins vacated after nearly winning their firstnational title since 1988. The problem America had with that Notre Dame team was the close wins — five by a touchdown or less that kept Notre Dame inside the top 5 andwithin striking distance of the final throughout the season. Manti Te'o's fake girlfriend was a wild story that emerged before the final matchup that fall.

You could probably put one of Florida’s Tim Tebow-led teams here too, but for the most part, the star quarterback was universally-well received. Prior to Tebow, Gainesville was Steve Spurrier’s city and the visor-wearing, slick-tongued ball coach left a lasting impression on the college football world. Sending verbal barbs to his opponents and running up the score withHeisman-winning quarterbackDanny Wuerffel in the Fun-N-Gun was his specialty. He hated Georgia, hated Tennessee and the feeling was mutual. The Gators won the national championship that fall with a 12-1 campaign, beating five top 15 teams in the process. Later in his career, Spurrier seemed to get a pass after wise crack and became somewhat of a football Jesus to sports writers.

The Cam Newton story and what followed really seemed to write itself, a former Florida quarterback ousted from the program after an alleged theft only to get another chance in the SEC as a JUCO star. Much like Jameis Winston and Johnny Manziel, Newton was vilified by opposing fans and many anxiously awaited his failure moment. Butit never came. Newtonwon the SEC and directed his team to an unblemished national championship season, recording one of the single-most impressive campaigns in the sport's history. Newton earned 729 first-place Heisman votes — the next closest player was Andrew Luck with ... 78.Newton was selected first overall by the Carolina Panthers and earned the NFL's Offensive Rookie of the Year award in 2011. Auburn's “ALL I DO IS WIN” motto during Newton's title run was fitting and sparked anger from everyone not rooting for WDE.

Jameis Winston is somewhere in the top 5 of most-hated players of all-time from college football fans outside of Tallahassee, who every week hoped the Seminoles' Winston-led dynasty would come to a crashing halt. It finally did in the 2014 Rose Bowl, when Florida State's emphatic loss to Oregon snapped an incredible 29-game win streak. But Winston already had a national title and Heisman under his belt and was selected first overall by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the NFL Draft. The 2014 FSU team survived several close calls against inferior ACC competition and managed a few fourth-quarter comebacks that sparked national conversation. Winston's numbers were not near as jaw-dropping as his 2013 season, but the wins came anyway.

The glory days of 21st century USC Football came to a head in 2005 when the Trojans were front-and-center every week on College GameDay with Matt Leinart, Reggie Bush and others dominating the national conversation. Everyone knew about the win streak and East Coasters were often glued to TVs every Saturday for late-night action. USC-Texaswas perhaps the biggest hype machine game of all-time and it delivered as Vince Young and the Longhorns won in the closing seconds, snapping USC’s run at the top. Earlier that season, Bush helped USC beat Notre Dame by pushing Leinart into the end zone in South Bend and eventually won a Heisman that was later stripped. The Trojans featured one of the most explosive offenses of all-time, scoring 50 or more points seven times thatseason.

The birth of swag, so they say. When the inmates run the asylum, you get instant chaos and that's exactly what the Hurricanes hoped to create on the field in the 1980s when 'The U' became college football's bad boys. Then-Sports Illustrated writer Rick Reilly said it best, "Miami may be the only squad in America that has its team picture taken from the front and from the side." On a team loaded with future NFL talent, Johnson basically didn’t believe in suspensions and handled all disciplinary action in-house. That included several slap-on-the-wrist penalties for alleged shoplifting and fraud infractions. Miami's swag wasn't enough in the national championship game against Penn State after the Hurricanes infamously stepped off the plane in military fatigues.Heisman-winning Miami quarterback Vinny Testaverde threw five interception and the Hurricanes fell, 14-10, for their only loss of the season. The widespread hate started the previous season when Johnson and the Hurricanes blasted Notre Dame by 51 points in a Catholics vs. Criminals showdown. Over five seasons with the Hurricanes, Johnson went 52-9 with a national title in 1987 and three Top 3 finishes, putting together one of the greatest runs of all-time.