QB Season Rankings

Many months ago when writing for a different BYU blog, I started thinking about ranking all of the BYU QBs, but I got bored with that exercise and a better idea emerged: ranking the QB seasons. Though it is interesting and fun to think about college careers, college sports are really about seasons, as even superstar players rarely make impacts for more the 2-3 seasons.

Process & Criteria

It’s hard to judge college QB seasons over time. I started with Gary Sheide’s 1974 season and moved forward. The offense changed a lot during the LaVell era, changed even more during the Crowton era, and has morphed even more under Bronco Mendenhall. It’s also hard to get stats for the seasons back in the day; I primarily used the wonderful Cougar Stats website in my research.

My criteria were as follows, with certainly a high level of subjectivity:

• Minimum 1000 yards passing, which means some years have two QB seasons
• Yards per pass attempt
• Completion percentage
• TD-to-INT ratio
• Total TD passes
• Season results

Is this perfect? Of course not. Will it leave a ton of room for discussion? Certainly. That’s the point.

• Seasons 41-36
• Seasons 35-31
• Seasons 30-26
• Seasons 25-21
• Seasons 20-16
• Seasons 15-11
• Seasons 10-6

The Top 5

5. Ty Detmer, 1989
4. Jim McMahon, 1981
3. Robbie Bosco, 1984
2. Steve Young, 1983
1. Jim McMahon, 1980