Breaking down the nation's top-10 rushing tandems

Clemson coach Tommy Bowden has two of the finest rushers in America at his disposal in C.J. Spiller and James Davis. Doug Benc/Getty Images

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Tommy Bowden fully understands both the pleasure and pain that can come from a potent tandem of running backs.

In James Davis and C.J. Spiller, the Clemson coach has one of the nation's best pairings. But as he looks down the Tigers' schedule, there's the Oct. 27 trip to Maryland where he'll have to deal with Lance Ball and Keon Lattimore and a Nov. 17 date with Boston College's Andre Callender and L.V. Whitworth.

Those are defensive assignments that offer Bowden a unique glimpse into what he puts opponents through on a weekly basis.

"You talk about BC, or whoever, 'Well, if we can just get that tailback. If we can make him afraid to play. If we can bang him up [and] make him question if he wants to be in there,' " Bowden said. "If you only have got one to attack, you can hone in on 'em. But when there's two of them, you have to take a whole different approach. It's a lot harder to prepare your team for two."

That's a lesson many college coaches are learning from the NFL. Just take a look at the four teams in last season's championship games (Chicago, Indianapolis, New England and New Orleans) and you'll see that on Sundays coaches are subscribing to the notion two backs are better than one.

"I think we get ideas a lot from the pros, [and] I would say the ability to have two quality guys, because of injury and durability, has filtered down to us," Bowden said.

The college landscape is full of devastating running combinations at the tailback position and it's high time we found out where they all rank. And for the record, yes, quarterbacks like Pat White can run with the best of them, but we're talking strictly tailbacks here.

1. Arkansas

Drawing comparisons to SEC greats such as Bo Jackson and Herschel Walker, Darren McFadden alone would be enough to make the Razorbacks backfield formidable. But it's Felix Jones -- the side dish to McFadden's entrée -- that turns it from formidable to feared.

McFadden ran for 1,647 yards and 14 touchdowns and finished second in the Heisman balloting behind Troy Smith last season, while Jones ran for 1,168 yards and six scores. The tandem Louisiana-Monroe coach Charlie Weatherbie dubbed "Wind and Lightning" became the first Arkansas duo to break the 1,000-yard mark in the same season and finished 1-2 in the SEC in rushing.

"Arkansas has never had that caliber of a backfield like we have right now," Razorbacks' coach Houston Nutt said.

The mixture of McFadden's raw strength and speed and Jones' elusiveness has given an air of unpredictability with the "Wildcat" formation (or "WildHog" as they're calling it in Fayetteville these days), where McFadden lines up at quarterback and can either hand it off, run himself or throw (he threw for three TDs on nine passes in '06).

"Our players do get excited because they feel like something's going to happen when a coach calls for that formation," Nutt said.

It's a versatile backfield unlike any other in the country. Just take a look at the media's preseason picks for the all-SEC first-team: The Hogs duo filled both RB slots, with McFadden earning a unanimous selection.

1A. Clemson

They're dubbed "Thunder and Lightning," but as Bowden attests, Davis and Spiller's games are much more alike. "That's a nice little nickname, but they both got a little 'Lightning' and they both got a little 'Thunder,' " he said.

Davis, the "Thunder," and Spiller, the "Lightning," combined for 2,125 yards and 27 touchdowns on the ground last year. While they finished with 710 yards less than the Razorbacks' duo, they had 106 less carries -- and seven more scores. That gives them somewhat equal billing on this list.

The 5-foot-11, 205-pound Davis led the way with 1,187 yards and 17 TDs, while Spiller (5-11, 190 pounds) ran for 938 yards and 10 scores, averaging an astounding 7.3 yards per carry.

The tandem is the centerpiece of the Tigers' offense, but don't expect to see them in the same backfield too often. Bowden expects to use Spiller, who had 1,415 all-purpose yards in '06, in a variety of ways, like Florida did with Percy Harvin.

"We'll have to be more creative because the natural reaction is to put them both in the backfield," Bowden said. "[But] if you put them both in the backfield, in say a split-back scenario, one's a blocker if the other one's running. What we have to do is be a little more creative in getting them on the field, maybe C.J. in the slot, maybe C.J. in quick-motion, maybe C.J. in a bubble screen as opposed to both of them in the backfield."

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