Alabama Football: CFB Royalty, Peasants and the Muddle in between.

Alabama football fans are members of a CFB Royal family. From the Kings down to the Peasants, CFB has a pecking order. Let’s see who rates where.

We have an interesting interlude for Alabama football fans, compliments off long-time sports journalist Stewart Mandel. In 2007, at the urging of a reader, Stewart engaged in an imaginative exercise to rank the prestige of the Power Five football programs.

Mandel published his first list in 2007. Realizing that national prestige does not change every season, he waited until 2012 to publish an update.

In explaining how he divided 66 teams into a “four-tier hierarchy,” Mandel wrote twice in si.com and this week in foxsports.com.

"“For reasons I can’t recall, I opted to invoke a Medieval feudal system in dividing the 66 BCS programs at the time into Kings, Knights, Barons and Peasants.”"

This week he published another update. We have enjoyed Mandel’s work for years and this project does not disappoint. He makes it clear what it is and what it is not.

"“I can’t emphasize enough that this concept is far from scientific … a ‘national power’ is defined by something more than wins and losses. It’s a certain cachet or aura. It’s the way a program is perceived by the public … derived in large part both by a program’s historical achievements and its more recent accomplishments … everything from TV contracts to iconic uniforms to famed mascots to … yes, helmets … annual recruiting rankings, where we usually see the same group of programs … year-in, year-out, regardless of annual ebbs and flows in their win-loss columns.”"

Stewart’s explanation makes it clear that his conclusions are subjective, and as such open to debate. Rightfully so, he placed Alabama football in the upper tier of the hierarchy, that he labels the “Kings” of college football. Alabama football is one of only 11 programs that made Mandel’s “Kings” list in 2007, 2012 and 2017.

Perusing Stewart’s list of the “Kings”; “Barons”; “Knights”; and “Peasants” is fun. It is very interesting to see how little change there is in the “Kings” group after 10 seasons.

We were also intrigued if Mandel’s ranking would indicate coaching continuity as a determinant in levels of prestige. More on that below, but first let’s take a look at some of the rankings. Here are the 2017 “Kings” and where every SEC team is ranked in 2017.

2017 Kings (Mandel lists them alphabetically)

• Alabama
• Clemson
• Florida
• Florida State
• LSU
• Miami
• Michigan
• Notre Dame
• Ohio State
• Oklahoma
• Penn State
• Texas
• USC

SEC 2017 “Barons”

• Auburn
• Georgia
• Tennessee
• Texas A&M

SEC 2017 “Knights”

• Arkansas
• Missouri
• Ole Miss
• South Carolina

SEC 2017 “Peasants”

• Kentucky
• Mississippi State
• Vanderbilt

To fully appreciate Stewart’s work, read the complete list at foxsports.com

For those who choose to not read all the details, here are the two most important points:

"“Eleven of the 13 Kings remained the same, with LSU and Clemson supplanting Tennessee and Nebraska.”And“16 of the 66 BCS-conference schools circa 2007 — just less than a quarter — changed tiers over the span of 10 years.”"

Next: Check out the New Offensive Coordinators the Tide defense faces in 2017

Reviewing the full lists from 2007, 2012 and 2017, we think Stewart’s work has merit. Like some other Alabama football fans, we think for certain qualitative reasons Auburn deserves permanent status as a “Peasant” program. Casting aside that ingrained prejudice, Mandel has the Tigers placed correctly in the “Barons” group.

We have long believed coaching continuity to be an ingredient in long-term program success. Using Stewart’s lists we anticipated measuring the average head coach tenure in each ranking tier would show, longer tenure equals more success (prestige.)

We were wrong. In the “Kings” and “Knights” tiers the average number of head coaches in the ten year period 2007-2016 was 2.7. In the “Barons” and “Peasants” tiers the average number of coaches was 3.1 during the same ten year period.

Another conclusion is while high revenue programs dominate the “Kings” tier, money alone does not boost a program to royalty. If it did, Phil Knight’s and T. Boone Pickens’ largess would have catapulted Oregon and Oklahoma State to the “Kings” tier.