[Note: It is my intent to present correct information in this analysis.  If anything is not correct, I apologize for the error.  I know this is a long post, but thank you for your consideration of my opinions as outlined below.]

The University of Alabama claims 12 national titles in its football history.  This statistic is controversial to some who want to blame the University for perpetrating some sort of grand hoax on the college football world by making such a claim.  Some seem to think that champions in college football were never acknowledged until the advent of the AP wire service poll in 1936.  Others want to re-write the annals of history and revoke prior national championships by applying today’s standards and views to the past. However, a brief analysis of national championship claims by various universities shows that schools across the landscape of college football lay claim to national championships in the same manner that the University of Alabama does.  Are some of the claims debatable?  Most likely, yes.  But the NCAA, which refuses to institute a formal method for choosing a national champion, is the culprit – not the various schools that claim national titles in the absence of a true championship.

National championships prior to the start of the AP poll in 1936 were chosen in many and various ways, and in some years multiple national champions were named across college football.  The naming of multiple champions still happens today as the AP poll and the Coaches poll may declare different winners; a unanimous choice is often not attained. Winning the Rose Bowl was certainly a feather in Alabama’s cap several times in those pre-AP poll years and helped propel them to national titles.  Michigan claims 11 national titles, and 8 of those were in the following years:  1901, 1902, 1903, 1904, 1918, 1923, 1932, and 1933.  Southern Cal claims 17 national titles – 11 of which they themselves term “consensus” and 6 they term as “other”.  USC claims “consensus” national titles in 1928, 1930, and 1932, and “other” national titles in 1929 and 1933.  Minnesota claims pre-AP titles in 1934 and 1935.  Notre Dame claims 21 national titles – 11 they term as “consensus” and 10 termed “other”.  Three of Notre Dame’s “consensus” national titles are claimed in the pre-AP years of 1924, 1929, and 1930.  This is just a sampling of national title claims prior to the start of the AP poll.  And all of those schools were being declared national champions by the same overall group of selectors, some of which rewarded titles retroactively.  Alabama, like Notre Dame and USC, notes both consensus and other national titles.  Also like USC and Notre Dame, Alabama only publicly claims what they consider to be their 12 consensus titles, and the other titles are mentioned as an aside.

Up until 1968, the AP poll awarded their championship after the regular season was complete and prior to bowl games (with the exception of 1965 when the poll was released after the bowl games).  From 1968 to the present day, the final poll has been released after post-season play.  The Coaches Poll started in 1950, and from 1950 to 1973, their national championship was awarded after the regular season was complete and before bowl games.  Since 1974, they have awarded their national championship after the post-season games are complete.  During the 24 years in which they awarded their championship after the regular season, fully 1/3 of the time, 8 of the 24 years, the national champion then lost their bowl game.  To this day, each of those 8 teams claims the national championship for that year in spite of the bowl game loss.  Those 8 teams are: Oklahoma in 1950, Tennessee in 1951, Maryland in 1953, Minnesota in 1960, Alabama in 1964, Michigan State in 1965, Texas in 1970, and Alabama in 1973.

Through the years, bowl games were viewed differently by the college football establishment of the time.  In the 1920’s when the Rose Bowl was the only game in town, its importance was great and helped determine national titles in the minds of some selectors.  For decades, Notre Dame did not even accept invitations to play in bowl games and yet they were awarded numerous national titles.  Besides Notre Dame, schools which won a wire service national title but did not play in a bowl game that year include Michigan State in 1952, UCLA in 1954, Oklahoma in 1956, and Auburn in 1957.  Yet many scream that it is an injustice for Alabama to claim national titles in years when they lost a bowl game.  I guess Alabama could have declined invitations to bowl games as Notre Dame did and not have taken the risk of losing.  The only reason Auburn was able to win a national title in 1957 was because pollsters dismissed the importance of even playing in a bowl game for determining the national title. Yet, only a few years later, Alabama is supposed to fall on its sword and decline the national title awarded to it by polls which then held a different view of bowl games than came to be developed later?  When Auburn went undefeated in 1993 but was prohibited from playing in a bowl game due to probation (which was their same situation in 1957), they did not receive serious consideration for the national title in large part because they did not play in a bowl game (or go to the SEC title game which was a requirement for SEC teams by that time).  That one example alone represents the change in views and national championship selection criteria from one era to the next. 

If wire service polls had been released after bowl games from 1936 forward, some of the results would have been different.  However, even attempting to determine what those differences would be is a useless exercise over time given that the preeminent football power of the time, Notre Dame, didn’t even consider bowls to be worthy of their time and participation. 

There did exist among many, especially in the 1960’s and prior, a view that bowl games were nothing more than a non-crucial reward at the end of the season for a job well done.  I remember in Gene Stallings’ first year at Alabama when he took the Tide to the Fiesta Bowl, leading up to the bowl he was quoted saying that the bowl game was just a reward for a good season and he wasn’t overly concerned about it (or something to that effect).  When I heard that comment, I had a bad feeling about the bowl and Alabama went on to be blown out by Louisville in a game that wasn’t even competitive.  I remember thinking at the time that Coach Stallings was verbalizing an outdated view of bowl games, a view that was widely held when he was a college player, and then a college coach in the 1960’s.  I believe his attitude regarding bowl games changed after that game and the team’s play reflected it in subsequent years.

Even among pollsters, the thought processes used from year to year are inconsistent.  The team with the best record is often not the national champion, including Minnesota winning the title over Ole Miss in 1960, 2-time defending national champion and undefeated Alabama finishing 3rd in 1966, 1967 when Wyoming was 10-0 and finished 7th while teams 1 – 6 had losses, 1970 when Arizona State was 11 – 0 and finished 6th behind teams with losses or ties, Penn State in 1973 which finished 12 – 0 and placed 6th behind teams

with losses or ties, another undefeated Arizona State team in 1975, 1990 when Colorado won the AP title over Georgia Tech, 2007 when Kansas was 12 – 1 and finished 7th behind 6 teams that each had 2 losses, and of course undefeated Utah in 2008 which finished 2nd behind one-loss Florida. If my memory serves

correctly, Arizona State was on probation some during the 1970’s, but so was Oklahoma and that never seemed to hurt them in the AP poll.  Also, the timing of losses can be important; it is generally better to lose early in the season than later (the 2007 LSU team notwithstanding).  But in 1984, when all thinking changed for one brief and shining moment in BYU’s Camelot, “best record” seemed to be the one and only criterion used that year by the pollsters.  In spite of playing in the weaker WAC (which did not come close to the strength of the Mountain West Conference of today), playing in a minor bowl, and beating an average Michigan team (points which are representative of factors considered by voters in most years), undefeated BYU was proclaimed the best in the land by the talking heads and most of the pollsters for one reason – they had the best record that year.  If you were a follower of college football back then, you likely remember that sentiment being repeated like a mantra – “Oh, they HAVE to win the title; after all, they have the best record.”  Indeed, pollsters can be unpredictable and inconsistent in their thinking from one year to the next.

I personally view Alabama’s claim to the 1941 national championship as a stretch.  However, there may be a rationale I have not heard regarding that year, and it is not the only strange claim out there.  Michigan State claims 4 national titles in the 1950’s and 1960’s when they won neither wire service championship: 1951 when Tennessee won both the AP and UPI national titles, 1955 when Oklahoma won both the AP and UPI, 1957 when Auburn won the AP title and Ohio State won the UPI, and 1966 when Notre Dame won both the AP and UPI titles.  A web site that seems to have done exhaustive research and put serious thought into the national championship claims of the various programs is the College Football Data Warehouse.  They credit Alabama with 11 national championships; the only one they do not recognize is the 1941 title.  I wish Alabama would claim 11 “consensus” national titles (with the outcome of the upcoming TX game representing a possible 12th) and relegate 1941 into the “other” category as UA has done with several additional years in which they received some sort of national title consideration. [See:  http://cfbdatawarehouse.com/data/national_championships/nchamps_team.php]

To summarize, Alabama is not the only school to claim numerous national championships including some prior to the start of the AP poll in 1936, and is not the only school to still claim national titles after losing bowl games. Alabama’s national championship claims are not unreasonable regardless of how many Youtube and blog-post fabrications we may see to the contrary. We may disagree with the criteria of choosing national champions from one era of college football to the next, but national title claims are present on web sites and in media guides across the country.