Oberlin: One of the worst teams in college football ... and also, maybe, the happiest?

Good morning, and thanks for spending part of your day with Extra Points.

Indiana was your best college football team in 2025. I wrote about the Hoosiers yesterday, and much of the rest of the college sports internet will write many more words about them. That’s awesome. They deserve it.

But today, I want to write about one of the worst teams in college football in 2025.

Every week during the season, my buddy Bill Connelly over at ESPN produces the ultimate college football nerd spreadsheet. Bill’s famous SP+ formula, which tracks a team’s performance on a per-play level, ranks every single team in college football, from the Big Ten to the NAIA. Forget your top 25. Bill makes a top 767.

At the end of the regular season, Ohio State was ranked No. 1, just ahead of Indiana, Texas Tech and Oregon. North Dakota State, the top FCS team, was ranked No. 37. Harding was the highest-ranked program in Division II, coming in at No. 150 (ahead of a few FBS programs, including UTEP and Kent State). North Central was the top ranked Division III team, at No. 242 (a few spots ahead of Columbia and UMass).

And then waaaaaay down at the bottom, at No. 766, was Oberlin, a tiny smidge above the absolute last-place team in the country, Maine Maritime.

If I am reading the data correctly, that would make Ohio State a roughly 152-point favorite over the Yeomen at a neutral field. It would make Oberlin a 70-point underdog against a very good D-III squad.

The Yeomen played a few of those this season. They opened the season against Calvin and lost, 88-6. Oberlin scored more than 20 points just once, in a 58-21 loss to Hiram College on Sept. 13. They scored 24 points over the course of the rest of the season. They finished, as you’d probably expect, 0-10.

Now, I grew up in Ohio, so I’m at least a little familiar with Oberlin. I know it wasn’t always that bad at football. In fact, Oberlin is the last in-state team to ever beat Ohio State in football (7-6, back in 1921). It was the place where John Heisman first coached college football. It has produced all-Americans and been at least competitive in the NCAC at various points over the past 20 years.

Like the rest of the NCAC, it’s also a very academically selective and demanding school. Your typical Oberlin student has an ACT score north of 30 and is working on multidisciplinary undergraduate research projects.

So the athletes on Oberlin’s football team are smart kids. They’ve got other things going on. They’re not planning on going pro in sports.

So what I wanted to know is … why? When you don’t have to do this, why get up at 4 a.m, get tackled at practice, only to lose to Kenyon by sixty?

I called up the team and asked.