Note: in the review that follows, title-contenders are shown in bold.

The 1995 season saw the biggest surprise of the decade: lowly Northwestern went undefeated in the Big Ten, and went to the Rose Bowl. Their unlikely story began on the first game of the season, when they shocked the nation by beating a good Notre Dame team, 17-15. The Wildcats seemed to return to form pretty quickly in a bad luck loss to Miami of Ohio, 30-28, but they would prove the naysayers wrong, not losing again the entire calendar year of 1995. The most dramatic proof came in a 19-13 win over 5-0 Michigan. The Wolverines, ironically, had just beaten Miami of Ohio, and had been rolling since a preseason victory over Virginia. The Wildcats would notch another upset with a 21-10 win over Penn State.

Northwestern's march to the Rose Bowl was aided by two other factors: one, the rule that stipulates that if two teams are tied at the top of the Big Ten, the team that has not been to the Rose Bowl most recently is the conference representative. Second was that they did not play Ohio State. As it turned out, the Wildcats were 8-0 in the Big Ten, while the Buckeyes finished 7-1. Ohio State beat Notre Dame 45-26 for their fourth win, and battled past Penn State 28-25 for their fifth. After rolling through the weaker teams in the conference, the Buckeyes were 10-0 on the season and griping that then 9-1 Northwestern would be the inferior Rose Bowl contender. That ended when 8-3 Michigan shocked John Cooper's Buckeyes 31-23.

Northwestern's Rose Bowl opponent was Southern Cal. The Trojans began the season hot, surging to 6-0 on the heels of a defense that hadn't given up more than 16 points in any game. That came to an end when 5-2 Notre Dame upset the Trojans, 38-10. They would play shakily thereafter, tying Washington and losing to UCLA before earning that Rose Bowl slot. The rest of the Pac Ten was dead; no other Pac Ten team would finish higher than 18th in the final AP poll.

The conference of the year was undoubtedly the Big 8. That conference placed an amazing 4 teams in the final top 10: Nebraska, Colorado, Kansas State, and Kansas. The story of these four teams is what happened when they played each other: the Buffaloes were 5-0 when they were shocked, 40-24, by the Jayhawks. The Jayhawks got to 7-0 before being beaten by the Wildcats, 41-7. Kansas State, in turn, had gotten to 6-0 when they lost 49-25 to Nebraska. The Jayhawks would also lose to Colorado, 27-17, whereas Colorado and Kansas would both lose to Nebraska. As a result, three teams would finish the Big 8 season at 9-2, whereas Nebraska was 11-0, having beaten the three challengers by scores of 49-25, 44-21, and 41-3. There was no doubt that the Big 8 was very good that year (all four teams would win their bowl games), and there was no doubt that Nebraska was easily the cream of the Big 8 crop.

Besides the cinderella story of Northwestern, the other "big surprise" of the 1995 season was the first ACC loss for Florida State. The Seminoles had looked like world-beaters in getting to 7-0 including the psychologically-important 41-17 beating of Miami and three ACC wins in which the Seminoles had scored 70 or more points. That came to a crashing halt in Charlottesville, when 6-3 Virginia stopped Warrick Dunn's dive for the goal line on the game's last play. The 33-28 loss dropped the Seminoles to 7-1.

Florida State would stay in the title hunt until being handled, 35-24, in Gainesville. Florida's season took off after a dramatic second half onslaught against Tennessee in an early season, 62-37 manhandling, and the Gators never looked back. After winning 11 games impressively, Florida overcame a sluggish first half to wax 8-3 Arkansas 34-3 in the SEC Championship game. Tennessee, after the loss to Florida, had rolled off 8 straight themselves to take a 10-1 record into the postseason. But only the Gators and the Cornhuskers were undefeated, setting up a 1 vs. 2 battle in the first game of the new Bowl Coalition in the Fiesta Bowl.