College Football's Championship Legacy: A Historical Ranking of Teams with the Most National Titles

Counting national championships in college football has always been a difficult and even controversial business. For most of the time since 1869, there has been no official championship game, leaving the designation to votes, consensuses, polls, and when looking into the distant past, often times just making an educated guess. This article explores which college football teams have won the most national championships, examining both the historical landscape since the sport's inception and the more recent AP Poll era.

The Elusive Nature of College Football Championships

A national championship in the highest level of college football in the United States, currently the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), is a designation awarded annually by various organizations to their selection of the best college football team. Division I FBS football is the only National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) sport for which the NCAA does not host a yearly championship event. Due to the lack of an official NCAA title, determining the nation's top college football team has often engendered controversy. A championship team is independently declared by multiple individuals and organizations, often referred to as "selectors". These choices are not always unanimous. In 1969 even the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, made a selection by announcing, ahead of the season-ending "game of the century" between No. 1 Texas and No.

While the NCAA has never officially endorsed a championship team, it has documented the choices of some selectors in its official NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records publication. In addition, various analysts have independently published their own choices for each season. These opinions can often diverge with others as well as individual schools' claims to national titles, which may or may not correlate to the selections published elsewhere.

Since 1992, various consortia of major bowl games have aimed to invite the top two teams at the end of the regular season (as determined by internal rankings, or aggregates of the major polls and other statistics) to compete in what is intended to be the de facto national championship game. The current iteration of this practice, the College Football Playoff, selects twelve teams to participate in a national first round or quarterfinals, with the final four teams advancing to the semifinals.

The Early Years: A Foundation of Champions

The concept of a national championship in college football dates to the early years of the sport in the late 19th century. Some of the earliest contemporaneous rankings can be traced to Caspar Whitney in Harper's Weekly, J. Football, however, is not a game where a great national championship is possible or desirable. Beyond rankings in newspaper columns, awards and trophies began to be presented to teams. Jack F. Professor Frank G. Dickinson of Illinois developed the first mathematical ranking system to be widely popularized. Chicago clothing manufacturer Jack F. Rissman donated a trophy for the system's national championship in 1926 onward, first awarded to Stanford prior to their tie with Alabama in the Rose Bowl. 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 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.

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Yale University: The Historical Leader

Yale University has received the most national titles in all of college football history, winning 18 since their first in 1874. Their most recent win was nearly a century ago in 1927. Out of the top 10 college football teams with the most national championships, three are Ivy League members. The top 10 teams account for two-thirds of all national titles won in college football. Since 1869, only 47 different teams have been crowned as national champions.

Princeton

Princeton claims 28 national championships, though only 15 are recognized by the NCAA.

The AP Poll Era: A New Measure of Dominance

Many college football fans consider the start of the AP Poll era to be the true beginning of college football. The 1936 season is often used as a good jumping off point to count meaningful national championships - the first year of the AP Top 25 poll.

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. 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.

Alabama: The AP Poll Era Champion

Since the AP Poll made its debut, Alabama can claim the most NCAA titles in the poll era, with only three of its 16 coming prior. No college football program before or since the AP poll has won more national championships than the Crimson Tide.

Notre Dame

Notre Dame’s nine championships in the poll era are the second-most out of all teams. One of the cornerstones of the sport, Notre Dame boasts two 100-win coaches - Knute Rockne brought the Irish their first national championship (1924), and Lou Holtz won the school's most recent (1988). Frank Leahy made Notre Dame the team of the '40s, building a dynasty only World War II could interrupt. Championships: 1943, 1946, 1947, 1949, 1966, 1973, 1977, 1988

Ohio State

Ohio State officially formed a football team in 1890, but the Buckeyes wouldn’t win a national championship until 1942. That year, after losing dozens of players who left to fight in World War II, Ohio State went 9-1, its only loss coming against No. 6 Wisconsin. OSU emerged as a national power in the 1910s, but it was Paul Brown who brought the scarlet and gray its first natty at the start of World War II. Woody Hayes established a run of dominance over a generation while Jim Tressel, Urban Meyer, and now Ryan Day each won a title, the latter two winning both the first four-team and first 12-team College Football Playoff titles. Championships: 1942, 1954, 1957, 1968, 2002, 2014, 2024

Oklahoma

Oklahoma is the only school with four 100-win coaches, owns a college football record 47-game win streak during the 1950s, and since 1945 leads the sport with 606 wins and a .762 win percentage. Oklahoma has made the College Football Playoff four times, but is yet to win a semifinal game. The Sooners won a trio of titles each under Bud Wilkinson and Barry Switzer. Championships: 1950, 1955, 1956, 1974, 1975, 1985, 2000

USC

One of the most consistent winners in college football from the 1920s onward, USC won four national titles under John McKay in the 60s and 70s. Pete Carroll returned the Trojans to the national stage, winning the AP title in '03, running the table in '04, and was one legendary Vince Young play in the Rose Bowl away from making it three straight. Championships: 1962, 1967, 1972, 1974, 1978, 2003, 2004

Miami

The team of the 80s, Miami built one title contender after another and stockpiled the NFL with elite talent for a generation. In Larry Coker's first season, the Hurricanes came roaring back and put together what arguably is the greatest and most overall talented team in college football history. Championships: 1983, 1987, 1989, 1991, 2001

Nebraska

Nebraska produced two dynasties in the last century, first in the 70s under coach Bob Devaney and again under his offensive coordinator Tom Osborne. Every one of Osborne's teams finished in the Top 25 poll and they all won at least nine games each season, and 16 of his teams placed inside the top 10. Championships: 1970, 1971, 1994, 1995, 1997

LSU

One of the top performing teams of the 21st century, LSU has ascended to the top of the college football mountain three times since 2000. It shares the '03 title with USC, but won the other two outright, including its 2019 record-breaking team which many analysts have called the greatest in the sport's history. Championships: 1958, 2003, 2007, 2019

Minnesota

Football was slightly different when Minnesota won its first national title in 1934. The first mini-dynasty of the poll era, Minnesota made Midwestern football famous in the pre-war period, winning three of the first six national championships after the advent of the Top 25 poll system. Championships: 1936, 1940, 1941, 1960

Texas

One of the teams of the 60s under head coach Darrell K Royal, the Longhorns picked up two titles in the decade, and a Coaches Poll championship in the 1970 season. Mack Brown brought the Horns back to national prominence in the early 21st century with a statement 2005 season, running the table and beating No. 1 USC in arguably the greatest game in college football history. Championships: 1963, 1969, 1970, 2005

Other Universities Who Have Won A Championship Since 1936

Beyond the top recipients, plenty of other programs have won a national title.

Two-Time College Football Champions

Pitt: 1936 and 1976Penn State: 1982 and 1986Army: 1944 and 1945Tennessee: 1951 and 1998Auburn: 1957 and 2010

One-Time College Football Champions

Syracuse: 1959Georgia Tech: 1990TCU: 1938Maryland: 1953Iowa: 1958BYU: 1984UCLA: 1954Washington: 1991Colorado, 1990Ole Miss: 1960Arkansas: 1964Texas A&M: 1939

The Evolution of Championship Selection

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 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.

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 Selectors of Champions

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 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.

The Bowl Championship Series used a mathematical system that combined polls (Coaches and AP/Harris) and multiple computer rankings (including some individual selectors listed above) to determine a season ending matchup between its top two ranked teams in the BCS Championship Game.

Unlike all selectors prior to 2014, the College Football Playoff does not use math, polls or research to select the participants.

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