A History of NCAA Football Championship Trophies

A national championship in college football's highest division, currently the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), is an annual designation awarded by various organizations to the team they deem the best. NCAA Division I FBS football stands apart as the only NCAA sport without a yearly NCAA-hosted championship event. The absence of an official NCAA title has frequently led to controversy in determining the nation's top college football team. A championship team is declared independently by multiple individuals and organizations, often referred to as "selectors," and these choices are not always unanimous.

Early Championship Designations

The concept of a national championship in college football dates back to the late 19th century. Some of the earliest contemporaneous rankings can be traced to Caspar Whitney in Harper's Weekly, J. Walter Camp, and others. However, early observers noted that football is not a game where a great national championship is possible or desirable.

Early Trophies and Ranking Systems

Beyond rankings in newspaper columns, awards, and trophies began to be presented to teams. Chicago clothing manufacturer Jack F. Rissman donated a trophy for the system's national championship in 1926 onward. The Rissman Trophy was retired by Notre Dame's three wins in 1924, 1929, and 1930; the Knute Rockne Memorial Trophy was put into competition for 1931 following the untimely death of the legendary coach. Two short-lived national championship trophies were contemporaries of the Dickinson System awards. College football's foremost historian Parke H. Davis is the only selector considered by the NCAA to have primarily used research in his selections.

Professor Frank G. Dickinson of Illinois developed the first mathematical ranking system to be widely popularized. A curious Knute Rockne, then coach of Notre Dame, convinced Dickinson and Rissman to backdate the Rissman Trophy two seasons; thus, Notre Dame is engraved on the trophy for 1924 and Dartmouth for 1925.

The Rise of Polls

The Associated Press (AP) began polling sportswriters in 1936 to obtain rankings. Alan J. Gould, the creator of the AP Poll, named Minnesota, Princeton, and SMU co-champions in 1935 and polled writers the following year, which resulted in a national championship for Minnesota. The AP's main competition, United Press (UP), created the first Coaches Poll in 1950. For that year and the next three, the AP and UP agreed on the national champion.

Evolution of Polling

These wire services began ranking college football teams in weekly polls, which were then promptly published in the sports sections of each agency's subscribing newspapers across the country. The Associated Press (AP) college football poll has a long history. The news media began running their own polls of sports writers to determine who was, by popular opinion, the best football team in the country at the end of the season. One of the earliest such polls was the AP College Football Poll, first run in 1934 and then continuously from 1936. The first major nationwide poll for ranking college football teams, the Associated Press is probably the most well-known and widely circulated among all of history's polls.

Both wire services originally conducted their final polls at the end of the regular season and prior to any bowl games being played. This changed when the AP Poll champion was crowned after the bowls for 1965 and then in 1968 onward. The Coaches Poll began awarding post-bowl championships in 1974. The AP's earlier move to crown a post-bowl champion paid off, as in all three years the losing team had also been the No.

Post-Season Polls

In the AP Poll's early years, the final poll of sportswriters was taken prior to any bowl games and sometimes even prior to the top teams' final games of the regular season. In 1938, the poll was extended for one week after Notre Dame, No. Following the 1947 season the AP held a special post-bowl poll with only two teams on the ballot, Notre Dame and Michigan, but stated that the result would not supersede that of the final poll conducted following the end of the regular season. The rivals, both unbeaten and untied, had been ranked No. 1 and No. 2 respectively in the final poll.

In 1965 the AP decided to delay the season's final poll until after New Year's Day, citing the proliferation of bowl games and the involvement of eight of the poll's current top ten teams in post-season play. In the next season, 1966, neither of the top two teams (Notre Dame and Michigan State) were attending bowl games so no post-bowl poll was taken, even after two-time defending AP national champion No. 3 Alabama won the Sugar Bowl and finished the season unbeaten and untied. In 1967 the final poll crowning USC national champion was taken before No. 2 Tennessee or No. In 1968 the final poll was again delayed until after the bowl games so that No. 1 Ohio State could meet No. 2 USC in a "dream match" in the Rose Bowl. Every subsequent season's final AP Poll would be released after the bowl games. UPI did not follow suit until the 1974 season; in the overlapping years, the Coaches Poll champion lost their bowl game in 1965, 1970, and 1973.

Influence of the AP Poll

The AP Poll was used as a component of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) computer ranking formula starting in 1998, but without any formal agreement in place like the contract made between the BCS and the Coaches Poll. For the 2003 season the AP Poll caused a split national title and BCS controversy when it awarded its national championship to No. In the College Football Playoff era, the Associated Press has continued to award the AP Trophy to the No. 1 team in the final AP Poll. Their votes will provide the only football rating based on the opinion of the men who know the sport best. Each season's final Coaches Poll was initially published following the regular season and did not take bowl game results into account

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The Bowl Coalition, Alliance, and Championship Series

The 1980s were marked by a succession of satisfying national championship games in the Orange Bowl and Fiesta Bowl, but the 1990s began with consecutive split AP Poll and Coaches Poll national titles in 1990 and 1991. The Bowl Coalition and then Bowl Alliance were formed to more reliably set up a No. 1 vs. No.

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS)

The Bowl Championship Series in 1998 succeeded in finally bringing the Big Ten and Pac-10 into the fold with the other conferences for a combined BCS National Championship Game rotated among the Fiesta, Sugar, Orange, and Rose bowls and venues. BCS rankings originally incorporated the two major polls as well as a number of computer rankings to determine the end of season No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup. Although the BCS era did regularly produce compelling matchups, the winnowing selection of the top two teams resulted in many BCS controversies, most notably 2003's split national championship caused by the BCS rankings leaving USC, No.

The College Football Playoff (CFP)

In 2014 the College Football Playoff made its debut, facilitating a multi-game single-elimination tournament for the first time in college football history. Until 2024, four teams were seeded by a 13-member selection committee rather than by existing polls or mathematical rankings. The two semifinal games were rotated among the New Year's Six bowl games, and the final was played a week later. Beginning in 2024, the playoff field was expanded to 12 teams.

The College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy

The College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy is the trophy awarded to the winner of the College Football Playoff (CFP), the postseason tournament in American college football that determines a national champion for the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). The 26.5-inch-tall (67 cm), 35-pound (16 kg) trophy is oblong-shaped like a football at the base, tapering up to a flattened full-size football at the top. It is made of 24-karat gold, bronze, and stainless steel, with the bulk of the trophy gold-colored and the football at the top a gray metallic color. The trophy is separate from its 12-inch-tall bronze base, so it can be hoisted. The base is finished in black patina and weighs 30 pounds (13.61 kg).

College Football Playoff officials commissioned the trophy for the new playoff system, preferring a new award that was unconnected with the previous Bowl Championship Series (BCS) postseason system which was sometimes controversial. An ascending virtual football, the trophy’s handcrafted gold brackets surround a hardened steel core. Designed by Pentagram, the trophy was commissioned by the CFP for the new playoff era. The design features a focused football at the center of the base that rises to form an actual-size ball. The trophy is handcrafted by the master fine art foundry UAP Polich Tallix. Handmade from 24k gold, bronze, and stainless steel, the trophy is 26.5 inches tall.

Prior to the 2014 season, the Bowl Championship Series era lacked a single official trophy for the national champion, with teams instead receiving recognition through various polls like the Associated Press and coaches' awards or bowl-specific honors. The new CFP trophy filled this void, serving as the unified emblem of the playoff system's national title and helping to establish a cohesive identity for the expanded postseason.

The College Football Playoff National Championship games have been held annually since the 2014 season, determining the national champion through a postseason tournament format that expanded to 12 teams starting with the 2024 season.

Dr Pepper's Sponsorship

Dr Pepper sponsors the trophy. The company originally came to an agreement with ESPN in 2014 to pay $35 million per year for sponsorship rights through the 2020 season; the two companies agreed to a contract extension in 2018 (the financial details of which have not been disclosed), allowing Dr Pepper to retain sponsorship rights through the 2026 College Football Playoff.

The MacArthur Bowl

Presented to every national champion since 1959, the National Football Foundation's MacArthur Bowl represents the pinnacle of team achievement in college sports. Named in honor of General Douglas MacArthur, the trophy features his famous quote: “There is no substitute for victory,” and each year a new name is etched alongside the greatest teams of all time.

The trophy, a replica of a football stadium, features miniature goal posts and archways with space to engrave the names of 100 championship teams. Hand crafted by Tiffany & Co. and valued at more than six figures, it took eight months to make. Since the start of the College Football Playoff (CFP) era in 2014, the winner of the CFP National Championship is automatically declared the winner of the MacArthur Bowl, as was the winner of the BCS National Championship Game from 1998 until 2013. The CFP Trophy is immediately awarded on the field after the national championship game while the MacArthur Bowl is presented later in the year.

Twenty-five different schools have claimed the MacArthur Bowl at least once during its 67-year history. Alabama has hoisted it the most, claiming it 10 times. Ohio State and Notre Dame have the second most wins with five each while Miami (FL), Southern California and Texas have each etched their names four times on the trophy. Clemson, Florida, Florida State, Georgia, LSU, Nebraska and Oklahoma each boast three trophies. “The MacArthur Bowl is a testimonial not only to superior ability but also to the exemplification of those qualities through the team, rising above heavy odds in demonstrating that superiority,” said the late-NFF Chairman Vincent dePaul Draddy in musing about the significance of the trophy in 1964.

Major Selectors of National Championships

Although the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) has never bestowed national championships in college football at the topmost level, it does maintain an official records book for the sport. While many people and organizations have named national champions throughout the years, the selectors below are listed in the official NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book as being "major selectors" of national championships. The NCAA records book divides its major selectors into three categories: those determined by mathematical formula, human polls, and historical research.

Many of the math selection systems were created during the 1920s and 1930s, beginning with Frank Dickinson's system, or during the dawn of the personal computer age in the 1990s. The poll has been the dominant national champion selection method since the inception of the AP Poll in 1936. For many years, the national champions of various polls were selected before the annual bowl games were played, by AP (1936-1964 and 1966-1967), Coaches Poll (1950-1973), FWAA (1954), and NFF (1959-1970).

College football historian Parke H. Davis is the only selector considered by the NCAA to have primarily used research in his selections. Davis published his work in the 1934 edition of Spalding's Foot Ball Guide, naming retroactive national champions for the years 1869 to 1932 while naming Michigan and Princeton (his alma mater) contemporary co-champions for the 1933 season. In all, he selected 94 teams over 61 seasons as "National Champion Foot Ball Teams". For 21 of these teams (at 12 schools), he was the only major selector to choose them. Their schools use 17 of Davis' singular selections to claim national titles.

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