Factoid 52 - College Football in the 20th Century (Part Two)

The 20th century saw a major power shift from the dominance of the Ivy League at the beginning of the century to the larger public university based conferences, such as the Big Ten, the Southeastern Conference, Pac-12, ACC, and the Big 12. (Present-day names of these conferences are used for familiarity’s sake.)

The Ivy League still managed to win 30 national titles through one polling service or another, but most of these were in the first two decades of the century. *

Overall though, the present Big Ten teams dominated the century, claiming 67 national titles through one polling service or another, while the next closest was the Southeastern Conference with 48.

Seven teams would win over a third of the championships for this century. Below is a list ranked by number of championships:

1. Notre Dame Fighting Irish
2. Alabama Crimson Tide
3. Michigan Wolverines
4. The Ohio State Buckeyes, Pittsburgh Panthers, USC Trojans, and the Nebraska Cornhuskers

By the end of the century power shifted to the Florida-based schools, which dominated the last decade of this century.

However, the biggest change of all for this century of college football was an attempt to settle who was the true National Champion via the implementation of the BCS National Title game in the 1998 season. The BCS National Title game pitted the number one ranked team vs. the number two ranked team at the end of the season, and the teams were determined via the BCS polling system.

* Note: Since there was no clear way to determine a national championship until the BCS National Championship, often there were multiple teams claiming national championships each year.