True College Football National Champions

Of all the major American spectator sports, listing the champions of Division 1 college football is by far the most head-scratching. In the 138 year-history of collegiate pigskin, 346 different teams have claimed part or all of a "National Title".

This is because, unlike the NFL with its Superbowl or college basketball with its NCAA Tournament, there has never been a definitive way of crowning college football's champion. Even the current BCS system -- which generally pits the two best teams against each other -- has already produced one split championship in its short ten-year history.

But instead of playoffs, the college football powers-that-be have long been content to let opinion polls and mathematical algorithms determine the best team each year. The result has been a gallery of champions that resembles more a wild west saloon fight than a hallowed hall of distinction.

The list of champions includes a lot of names you would expect such as Notre Dame with 21 National Titles, Oklahoma with 17 and Michigan and USC with 16 a piece. But way at the top of the list are Princeton with 28 and Yale with 27.

What?

Yes, well -- as it turns out, college football got its start in New Jersey when Rutgers took on Princeton in 1869. Only two games were played that season, both between the New Jersey schools. And true to the college football spirit, with each team dropping a game to the other to finish the year 1-1, they also had to split the 1869 National Title.

It would have been so simple, wouldn't it, to have played one more game to decide a true National Champion. But no. The precedent was set for the next 137 years of disputes.