110-592: 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. As such, it
220-552: A 0–0 tie. The Army–Navy game of 1893 saw the first documented use of a football helmet by a player in a game. Joseph M. Reeves had a crude leather helmet made by a shoemaker in Annapolis and wore it in the game after being warned by his doctor that he risked death if he continued to play football after suffering an earlier kick to the head. In 1879, the University of Michigan became the first school west of Pennsylvania to establish
330-594: A 13–member selection committee rather than by existing polls or mathematical rankings. The two semifinal games are rotated among the New Year's Six bowl games, and the final is played a week later. The competition awards its own national championship trophy . 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
440-456: A 56-game undefeated streak that included a 1902 trip to play in the first college football bowl game , which later became the Rose Bowl Game . During this streak, Michigan scored 2,831 points while allowing only 40. Organized intercollegiate football was first played in the state of Minnesota on September 30, 1882, when Hamline was convinced to play Minnesota . Minnesota won 2 to 0. It
550-556: A No. 1 vs. No. 2 matchup in a bowl game on New Year's Day, but their efforts were hampered by the Rose Bowl's historic draw and contractual matchup between the Big Ten and Pac-10 conference champions. 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
660-503: A college football team. On May 30, 1879, Michigan beat Racine College 1–0 in a game played in Chicago. The Chicago Daily Tribune called it "the first rugby-football game to be played west of the Alleghenies ." Other Midwestern schools soon followed suit, including the University of Chicago , Northwestern University , and the University of Minnesota . The first western team to travel east
770-641: A game where a great national championship is possible or desirable. The very nature of the sport would forbid anything like such a series of contests as are played in baseball." Claimed intercollegiate championships were limited to various selections and rankings, as the nature of the developing and increasingly violent full-contact sport made it impossible to schedule a post-season tournament to determine an "official" or undisputed champion. National championships in this era were well understood to be "mythical" . Beyond rankings in newspaper columns, awards and trophies began to be presented to teams. In 1917 members of
880-447: A great deal to Harvard's rugby. They decided to play with 15 players on each team. On November 13, 1875, Yale and Harvard played each other for the first time ever, where Harvard won 4–0. At the first The Game (as the annual contest between Harvard and Yale came to be named) the future "father of American football" Walter Camp was among the 2000 spectators in attendance. Walter, a native of New Britain, Connecticut , would enroll at Yale
990-536: A liking to the rugby game, and its use of the try which, until that time, was not used in American football. The try would later evolve into the score known as the touchdown . On June 4, 1875, Harvard faced Tufts University in the first game between two American colleges played under rules similar to the McGill/Harvard contest, which was won by Tufts 1–0. The rules included each side fielding 11 men at any given time,
1100-634: A merger with International News Service in 1958. The weekly ranking was a joint polling effort between the news agency and the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA), with UP/UPI sports writers gathering and tabulating the coaches' votes and publishing the results in newspapers across the nation. The UP/UPI rankings were originally conducted by polling 35 of the nation's college football coaches. The coaches were chosen to represent every major football conference, with 5 coaches from each of 7 regions, in an apparent effort to combat
1210-487: A new code of rules based on the rugby game first introduced to Harvard by McGill University in 1874. Three of the schools—Harvard, Columbia, and Princeton—formed the Intercollegiate Football Association, as a result of the meeting. Yale initially refused to join this association because of a disagreement over the number of players to be allowed per team (relenting in 1879) and Rutgers were not invited to
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#17328556120891320-499: A player to pick up the ball and run with it whenever he wished. Another rule, unique to McGill, was to count tries (the act of grounding the football past the opposing team's goal line; there was no end zone during this time), as well as goals, in the scoring. In the Rugby rules of the time, a try only provided the attempt to kick a free goal from the field. If the kick was missed, the try did not score any points itself. Harvard quickly took
1430-663: A post-bowl champion paid off, as in all three years the losing team had also been the No. 1 team in the pre-bowl penultimate AP rankings. 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
1540-462: A professional roster spot as an undrafted free agent . Despite these opportunities, only around 1.6% of NCAA college football players end up playing professionally in the NFL. Even after the emergence of the professional National Football League (NFL), college football has remained extremely popular throughout the U.S. Although the college game has a much larger margin for talent than its pro counterpart,
1650-462: A result, the public and the media began to take the leading vote-getter in the final AP Poll as the national champion for that season. 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. 1 in the scheduled "final" poll, subsequently lost to rival USC . Following
1760-504: A rougher version of football called "the Boston Game" in which the kicking of a round ball was the most prominent feature though a player could run with the ball, pass it, or dribble it (known as "babying"). The man with the ball could be tackled, although hitting, tripping, "hacking" and other unnecessary roughness was prohibited. There was no limit to the number of players, but there were typically ten to fifteen per side. A player could carry
1870-524: A round ball instead of a rugby-style oblong ball. This series of games represents an important milestone in the development of the modern game of American football. In October 1874, the Harvard team once again traveled to Montreal to play McGill in rugby, where they won by three tries. In as much as Rugby football had been transplanted to Canada from England, the McGill team played under a set of rules which allowed
1980-552: A season ending matchup between its top two ranked teams in the BCS Championship Game. The champion of that game was contractually awarded the Coaches Poll and National Football Foundation championships. Unlike all selectors prior to 2014, the College Football Playoff does not use math, polls or research to select the participants. Rather, a 13-member committee selects and seeds the teams. The playoff system marked
2090-421: A selection by announcing, ahead of the season-ending "game of the century" between No. 1 Texas and No. 2 ( AP ) Arkansas , that the winner would receive a presidential plaque commemorating them as national champions despite the fact that Texas and Arkansas still had to play in a bowl game afterward. Texas went on to win, 15–14. While the NCAA has never officially endorsed a championship team, it has documented
2200-478: A split national title and BCS controversy when it awarded its national championship to No. 1 USC instead of BCS champion LSU . In December 2004 the AP opted out of the BCS formula, requesting that the BCS "discontinue its unauthorized use of the AP poll as a component of BCS rankings", in response to three AP voters from Texas elevating Texas above California into the Rose Bowl in the last regular season AP Poll. In
2310-537: A team be required to advance the ball a minimum of five yards within three downs. These down-and-distance rules, combined with the establishment of the line of scrimmage, transformed the game from a variation of rugby football into the distinct sport of American football. Camp was central to several more significant rule changes that came to define American football. In 1881, the field was reduced in size to its modern dimensions of 120 by 53 1 ⁄ 3 yards (109.7 by 48.8 meters). Several times in 1883, Camp tinkered with
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#17328556120892420-505: A youth, he excelled in sports like track , baseball, and association football, and after enrolling at Yale in 1876, he earned varsity honors in every sport the school offered. Following the introduction of rugby-style rules to American football, Camp became a fixture at the Massasoit House conventions where rules were debated and changed. Dissatisfied with what seemed to him to be a disorganized mob, he proposed his first rule change at
2530-478: Is additionally categorized as a hybrid between math and polls, and the CFP as a playoff system. 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. Selectors are listed below with years selected retroactively in italics . The poll has been the dominant national champion selection method since
2640-525: Is generally considered to be the second tier of American and Canadian football; ahead of high school competition , but below professional competition . In some parts of the United States, especially the South and Midwest , college football is more popular than professional football. For much of the 20th century, college football was generally considered to be more prestigious than professional football. The overwhelming majority of professional football players in
2750-412: 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 games of the quarterfinals and semifinals are hosted by all of the six partner bowl games , with the final two remaining teams advancing to
2860-839: Is most popular in the United States and Canada. While no single governing body exists for college football in the United States, most schools, especially those at the highest levels of play, are members of the NCAA . In Canada, collegiate football competition is governed by U Sports for universities. The Canadian Collegiate Athletic Association (for colleges) governs soccer and other sports but not gridiron football. Other countries, such as Mexico , Japan and South Korea , also host college football leagues with modest levels of support. Unlike most other major sports in North America , no official minor league farm organizations exist for American football or Canadian football . Therefore, college football
2970-565: Is not out of the realm of possibility that a team could win the AP national championship without winning the College Football Playoff's national championship", although that scenario has yet to occur. News agency United Press (UP), the main competitor to the Associated Press, began conducting its own college football ratings during the 1950 season . The wire service came to be known as United Press International (UPI) following
3080-481: Is sometimes referred to as a " mythical national championship ". 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
3190-473: 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
3300-658: Is widely regarded as having originated with a game played in Montreal, in 1865, when British Army officers played local civilians. The game gradually gained a following, and the Montreal Football Club was formed in 1868, the first recorded non-university football club in Canada. Early games appear to have had much in common with the traditional " mob football " played in Great Britain. The games remained largely unorganized until
3410-426: 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. January voters were impressed by Michigan's 49–0 win over common opponent USC in
College football national championships in NCAA Division I FBS - Misplaced Pages Continue
3520-505: The 1968 , 1969 , and 1973 seasons unbeaten, untied, and with Orange Bowl victories yet were left without a single major national title. 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
3630-525: The Associated Press (AP), which conducts a poll of sportswriters , and the Coaches Poll , a survey of active members of the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA). 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
3740-585: The College Football Playoff National Championship . 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. Parmly Paret in Outing , Charles Patterson, and New York newspaper The Sun . "Football, however, is not
3850-497: 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. AP rankings are not incorporated in the CFP selection committee's seeding, and voting AP sportswriters are not obligated to award their title to the winner of the CFP national championship game . In 2015 the Associated Press's global sports editor stated that "it
3960-468: 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
4070-533: The Houlgate System , Azzi Ratem rankings, Dunkel Power Index , Williamson System , and Litkenhous Ratings . Two short-lived national championship trophies were contemporaries of the Dickinson System awards. The Albert Russel Erskine Trophy was won twice by Note Dame in 1929 and 1930 , as voted by 250 sportswriters from around the country. The large silver Erskine trophy was last awarded to USC on
4180-609: The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records or may not claim national championship selections that do appear in the official NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records (see National championship claims by school below). National championship selectors came to be dominated by two competing news agencies in the later half of the 20th century: the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI). These wire services began ranking college football teams in weekly polls, which were then promptly published in
4290-510: The NFL and other leagues previously played college football. The NFL draft each spring sees 224 players selected and offered a contract to play in the league, with the vast majority coming from the NCAA . Other professional leagues, such as the CFL and UFL , additionally hold their own drafts each year which also see primarily college players selected. Players who are not selected can still attempt to obtain
4400-662: The Old Main lawn on campus in State College, Pennsylvania . They compiled a 12–8–1 record in these seasons, playing as an independent from 1887 to 1890. In 1891, the Pennsylvania Intercollegiate Football Association (PIFA) was formed. It consisted of Bucknell University , Dickinson College , Franklin & Marshall College , Haverford College , Penn State, and Swarthmore College . Lafayette College , and Lehigh University were excluded because it
4510-577: 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. The popularity of the Dickinson System kicked off a succession of mathematical rankings carried in newspapers and magazines such as
College football national championships in NCAA Division I FBS - Misplaced Pages Continue
4620-532: The Rose Bowl and elevated the Wolverines above the Irish in the special post-bowl poll. The AP champion would lose its bowl game five times, following the 1950 , 1951 , 1953 , 1960 , and 1964 seasons . 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
4730-601: The Williamson System as having selected TCU and LSU as co-champions for 1935. However the system's post-bowl final rankings published in January 1936 show TCU first, SMU second, and LSU third. The accompanying column written by Paul B. Williamson states "There was no undisputable national champion in 1935". The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists the Williamson System as having selected LSU in 1936. However
4840-401: The 19th century, when intramural games of football began to be played on college campuses. Each school played its own variety of football. Princeton University students played a game called "ballown" as early as 1820. In 1827, a Harvard tradition known as "Bloody Monday" began, which consisted of a mass ballgame between the freshman and sophomore classes. In 1860, both the town police and
4950-1803: The 2005 Orange Bowl and USC's 2004 BCS National Championship, and the AFCA Coaches Poll Coaches' Trophy was returned. Record does not count wins against UCLA, or against Oklahoma in the BCS Championship game on January 4, 2005, as they were vacated by the NCAA. The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists Dunkel as having selected LSU, while Dunkel's official website gave USC as its 2007 selection. The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists CCR as having selected LSU, while CCR's official website gives USC as its 2003 selection. The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists DeVold (DeS) as having selected Florida, while DeVold's official website gives Ohio State as its 2006 selection. The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists R(FACT) as having selected Florida, while R(FACT)'s official website gives co-champions Ohio State and Florida as its 2006 selection. The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists Wolfe as having selected Florida, while Wolfe's official website gives Utah as its 2008 selection. The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists CCR as having selected Alabama, while CCR's official website gives LSU as its 2011 selection. The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists Anderson & Hester (A&H) as having selected LSU, while A&H's official website gives Missouri as its 2007 selection. The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists Anderson & Hester (A&H) as having selected Alabama, while A&H's official website gives LSU as its 2011 selection. The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists
5060-497: The 9–0 Georgia Tech squad were given gold footballs with the inscription "National Champions" by alumni at their post-season banquet. The Veteran Athletes of Philadelphia put up the Bonniwell Trophy for the national championship in 1919 under the stipulation that it was only "to be awarded in such years as produces a team whose standing is so preeminent as to make its selection as champion of America beyond dispute." Notre Dame
5170-594: The Associated Press is probably the most well-known and widely circulated among all of history's polls. Due to the long-standing historical ties between individual college football conferences and high-paying bowl games like the Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl , the NCAA has never held a tournament or championship game to determine the champion of what is now the highest division, NCAA Division I , Football Bowl Subdivision (the Division I, Football Championship Subdivision and lower divisions do hold championship tournaments). As
5280-492: The BCS era, the winner of the BCS Championship Game was automatically awarded the national championship of the Coaches Poll and the National Football Foundation. Selectors are listed below with years selected retroactively in italics . Poll selections that constitute a "Consensus National Championship" in 1950 or later, as designated by the NCAA, are listed in bold . College football historian Parke H. Davis
5390-460: The BCS rankings leaving USC , No. 1 in both human polls, out of the Sugar Bowl . The BCS victors were annually awarded The Coaches' Trophy "crystal football" on the field immediately following the championship game. In 2014 the College Football Playoff made its debut, facilitating a multi-game single-elimination tournament for the first time in college football history. Four teams are seeded by
5500-515: The College of New Jersey, in the first collegiate football game . The game more closely resembled soccer than football as it is played in the 21st century. It was played with a round ball , and used a set of rules suggested by Rutgers captain William J. Leggett , based on The Football Association 's first set of rules , which were an early attempt by the former pupils of England's public schools, to unify
5610-746: The Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City to codify the first set of intercollegiate football rules. Before this meeting, each school had its own set of rules and games were usually played using the home team's own particular code. At this meeting, a list of rules, based more on the Football Association's rules than the rules of the recently founded Rugby Football Union , was drawn up for intercollegiate football games. Old "Football Fightum" had been resurrected at Harvard in 1872, when Harvard resumed playing football. Harvard, however, preferred to play
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#17328556120895720-490: The NCAA's designation is that the poll or selector be "national in scope, either through distribution in newspaper, television, radio and/or computer online". Former selectors, deemed instrumental in the sport of college football, and selectors that were included for the calculation of the BCS standing, are listed together. The NCAA records book divides its major selectors into three categories: those determined by mathematical formula, human polls, and historical research. The BCS
5830-510: The NFL, are not permitted by the NCAA to be paid salaries. Colleges are only allowed to provide non-monetary compensation such as athletic scholarships that provide for tuition, housing, and books. With new bylaws made by the NCAA, college athletes can now receive "name, image, and likeness" (NIL) deals, a way to get sponsorships and money before their pro debut. Modern North American football has its origins in various games, all known as "football", played at public schools in Great Britain in
5940-730: The North Carolina State Fairgrounds in Raleigh, North Carolina . On November 13, 1887, the Virginia Cavaliers and Pantops Academy fought to a scoreless tie in the first organized football game in the state of Virginia . Students at UVA were playing pickup games of the kicking-style of football as early as 1870, and some accounts even claim that some industrious ones organized a game against Washington and Lee College in 1871, just two years after Rutgers and Princeton's historic first game in 1869. But no record has been found of
6050-428: The ball only when being pursued. As a result of this, Harvard refused to attend the rules conference organized by Rutgers, Princeton and Columbia at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York City on October 20, 1873, to agree on a set of rules and regulations that would allow them to play a form of football that was essentially Association football; and continued to play under its own code. While Harvard's voluntary absence from
6160-476: The ball was advanced by kicking or carrying it, and tackles of the ball carrier stopped play – actions of which have carried over to the modern version of football played today Harvard later challenged its closest rival, Yale, to which the Bulldogs accepted. The two teams agreed to play under a set of rules called the "Concessionary Rules", which involved Harvard conceding something to Yale's soccer and Yale conceding
6270-473: The bench seating). This allows them to seat more fans in a given amount of space than the typical professional stadium, which tends to have more features and comforts for fans. Only three stadiums owned by U.S. colleges or universities, L&N Stadium at the University of Louisville , Center Parc Stadium at Georgia State University , and FAU Stadium at Florida Atlantic University , consist entirely of chair back seating. College athletes, unlike players in
6380-488: 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 (compiled and organized by Charles Woodroof, former SEC Assistant Director of Media Relations, but not recognized in the official NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records ) and then continuously from 1936. The first major nationwide poll for ranking college football teams,
6490-490: The bottom of the table. Parke H. Davis' selection for 1901, as published in the 1934 edition of Spalding's Foot Ball Guide , was Harvard. The NCAA Records Book states "Yale" for 1901, which is an error that has been perpetuated since the first appearance of Parke H. Davis' selections in the 1994 NCAA records book. The FWAA stripped USC of its 2004 Grantland Rice Trophy and vacated the selection of its national champion for 2004. The BCS also vacated USC's participation in
6600-474: The center. Later changes made it possible to snap the ball with the hands, either through the air or by a direct hand-to-hand pass. Rugby league followed Camp's example, and in 1906 introduced the play-the-ball rule, which greatly resembled Camp's early scrimmage and center-snap rules. In 1966, rugby league introduced a four-tackle rule (changed in 1972 to a six-tackle rule) based on Camp's early down-and-distance rules. Camp's new scrimmage rules revolutionized
6710-447: 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. Historically, the two most widely recognized national championship selectors are
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#17328556120896820-546: The city of New Haven , banned the play of all forms of football in 1860. American football historian Parke H. Davis described the period between 1869 and 1875 as the 'Pioneer Period'; the years 1876–93 he called the 'Period of the American Intercollegiate Football Association'; and the years 1894–1933 he dubbed the "Period of Rules Committees and Conferences". On November 6, 1869, Rutgers University faced Princeton University , then known as
6930-482: The college authorities agreed the Bloody Monday had to go. Harvard students responded by going into mourning for a mock figure called "Football Fightum", for whom they conducted funeral rites. The authorities held firm, and it was another dozen years before football was once again played at Harvard. Dartmouth played its own version called " Old division football ", the rules of which were first published in 1871, though
7040-415: The country and selection of a national champions can be traced to Caspar Whitney in 1901. The tie was removed from college football in 1995 and the last consensus champion with a tie in its record was Georgia Tech in 1990. As designated by the official NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records publication: A letter next to any season, team, record, coach or selector indicates a footnote that appears at
7150-437: 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. National champions crowned by pre-bowl polls who subsequently lost their bowl game offered an opportunity for other teams to claim the title based on different selectors' awards and rankings, such as
7260-634: The field in Pasadena following their "national championship game" victory over Tulane in the 1932 Rose Bowl . The Toledo Cup was meant to be a long-running traveling trophy, but was promptly permanently retired by Minnesota's threepeat in 1934 , 1935 , and 1936 . College football's foremost historian Parke H. Davis compiled a list of "National Champion Foot Ball Teams" for the 1934 edition of Spalding's Official Foot Ball Guide . Davis selected national champions for each year dating back to college football's inaugural season in 1869 , for which he selected
7370-634: The first game in Virginia. On April 9, 1880, at Stoll Field , Transylvania University (then called Kentucky University) beat Centre College by the score of 13 + 3 ⁄ 4 –0 in what is often considered the first recorded game played in the South . The first game of "scientific football" in the South was the first instance of the Victory Bell rivalry between North Carolina and Duke (then known as Trinity College) held on Thanksgiving Day , 1888, at
7480-404: The first meeting he attended in 1878: a reduction from fifteen players to eleven. The motion was rejected at that time but passed in 1880. The effect was to open up the game and emphasize speed over strength. Camp's most famous change, the establishment of the line of scrimmage and the snap from center to quarterback , was also passed in 1880. Originally, the snap was executed with the foot of
7590-425: The first time any championship selector arranged a bracket competition to determine whom it would declare to be its champion. Below is a list of the national champions of college football since 1869 chosen by NCAA -designated "major selectors" listed in the official Football Bowl Subdivision Records publication. Many teams did not have coaches as late as 1899. The first contemporaneous poll to include teams across
7700-404: The first time. The Yale team was coached and captained by David Schley Schaff, who had learned to play football while attending Rugby School . Schaff himself was injured and unable to play the game, but Yale won the game 3–0 nonetheless. Later in 1872, Stevens Tech became the fifth school to field a team. Stevens lost to Columbia, but beat both New York University and City College of New York during
7810-517: 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. The first "split" national championship between the major polls occurred in 1954, when the writers selected Ohio State and the coaches chose UCLA . The two polls have disagreed 11 times since 1950. Both wire services originally conducted their final polls at
7920-454: The following year. By 1873, the college students playing football had made significant efforts to standardize their fledgling game. Teams had been scaled down from 25 players to 20. The only way to score was still to bat or kick the ball through the opposing team's goal, and the game was played in two 45-minute halves on fields 140 yards long and 70 yards wide. On October 20, 1873, representatives from Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and Rutgers met at
8030-431: The game dates to at least the 1830s. All of these games, and others, shared certain commonalities. They remained largely "mob" style games, with huge numbers of players attempting to advance the ball into a goal area, often by any means necessary. Rules were simple, and violence and injury were common. The violence of these mob-style games led to widespread protests and a decision to abandon them. Yale , under pressure from
8140-404: The game, though not always as intended. Princeton, in particular, used scrimmage play to slow the game, making incremental progress towards the end zone during each down . Rather than increase scoring, which had been Camp's original intent, the rule was exploited to maintain control of the ball for the entire game, resulting in slow, unexciting contests. At the 1882 rules meeting, Camp proposed that
8250-574: The inception of the AP Poll in 1936. The National Football Foundation merged its poll with UPI from 1991 to 1992, with USA Today from 1993 to 1996, and with the FWAA since 2014. 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). In all other latter-day polls, champions were selected after bowl games. During
8360-468: The last two decades of the 19th century. Several major rivalries date from this time period. November 1890 was an active time in the sport. In Baldwin City, Kansas , on November 22, 1890, college football was first played in the state of Kansas . Baker beat Kansas 22–9. On the 27th, Vanderbilt played Nashville (Peabody) at Athletic Park and won 40–0. It was the first time organized football played in
8470-493: The meeting made it hard for them to schedule games against other American universities, it agreed to a challenge to play the rugby team of McGill University , from Montreal , in a two-game series. It was agreed that two games would be played on Harvard's Jarvis baseball field in Cambridge, Massachusetts on May 14 and 15, 1874: one to be played under Harvard rules, another under the stricter rugby regulations of McGill. Jarvis Field
8580-415: The meeting. The rules that they agreed upon were essentially those of rugby union at the time with the exception that points be awarded for scoring a try , not just the conversion afterwards ( extra point ). Incidentally, rugby was to make a similar change to its scoring system 10 years later. Walter Camp is widely considered to be the most important figure in the development of American football. As
8690-452: The mid-19th century. By the 1840s, students at Rugby School were playing a game in which players were able to pick up the ball and run with it, a sport later known as rugby football . The game was taken to Canada by British soldiers stationed there and was soon being played at Canadian colleges. The first documented gridiron football game was played at University College , a college of the University of Toronto , on November 9, 1861. One of
8800-710: The nearest college to play football. It took place at Hamilton Park in New Haven and was the first game in New England. The game was essentially soccer with 20-man sides, played on a field 400 by 250 feet. Yale wins 3–0, Tommy Sherman scoring the first goal and Lew Irwin the other two. After the first game against Harvard, Tufts took its squad to Bates College in Lewiston, Maine for the first football game played in Maine . This occurred on November 6, 1875. Penn 's Athletic Association
8910-430: 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. 3 Oklahoma had even played their final games of
9020-603: The next year. He was torn between an admiration for Harvard's style of play and the misery of the Yale defeat, and became determined to avenge Yale's defeat. Spectators from Princeton also carried the game back home, where it quickly became the most popular version of football. On November 23, 1876, representatives from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Columbia met at the Massasoit House hotel in Springfield, Massachusetts to standardize
9130-472: The participants in the game involving University of Toronto students was William Mulock , later chancellor of the school. A football club was formed at the university soon afterward, although its rules of play then are unclear. In 1864, at Trinity College , also a college of the University of Toronto, F. Barlow Cumberland and Frederick A. Bethune devised rules based on rugby football. Modern Canadian football
9240-459: The perceived East Coast bias of the rival AP Poll's constituent sports writers. College football NAIA : NJCAA : College football ( French : football universitaire ) is gridiron football that is played by teams of amateur student-athletes at universities and colleges. It was through collegiate competition that gridiron football first gained popularity in the United States . Like gridiron football generally, college football
9350-523: The post-bowl FWAA Grantland Rice Award or Helms Athletic Foundation title. Post-bowl polls allowed for the possibility of a "national championship game" to finally settle the question on the gridiron . But a number of challenges made it difficult to schedule even the season's top two teams to play in a single post-season bowl game , let alone all of the deserving teams. Calls for a college football playoff were frequently made by head coach Joe Paterno of Penn State , whose independent teams finished
9460-502: The regular season, and well before those two teams met in the Orange Bowl . 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 . The AP's earlier move to crown
9570-482: The rules of their various public schools. The game was played at a Rutgers Field in New Brunswick, New Jersey . Two teams of 25 players attempted to score by kicking the ball into the opposing team's goal. Throwing or carrying the ball was not allowed, but there was plenty of physical contact between players. The first team to reach six goals was declared the winner. Rutgers won by a score of six to four. A rematch
9680-615: The rules were changed to allow tackling below the waist, and in 1889, the officials were given whistles and stopwatches. After leaving Yale in 1882, Camp was employed by the New Haven Clock Company until his death in 1925. Though no longer a player, he remained a fixture at annual rules meetings for most of his life, and he personally selected an annual All-American team every year from 1889 through 1924. The Walter Camp Football Foundation continues to select All-American teams in his honor. College football expanded greatly during
9790-514: The rules were formulated before the game. Bonniwell Trophy The Eugene C. Bonniwell National Football Trophy of America was a trophy presented in the United States to the college football team recognized as national champions by the directors of the Veteran Athletes of Philadelphia. The trophy was awarded by the Veteran Athletes of Philadelphia, an organization made up of former Olympic and intercollegiate athletes. The trophy
9900-570: The score of this contest. Washington and Lee also claims a 4 to 2 win over VMI in 1873. On October 18, 1888, the Wake Forest Demon Deacons defeated the North Carolina Tar Heels 6 to 4 in the first intercollegiate game in the state of North Carolina . On December 14, 1889, Wofford defeated Furman 5 to 1 in the first intercollegiate game in the state of South Carolina . The game featured no uniforms, no positions, and
10010-431: The scoring rules, finally arriving at four points for a touchdown, two points for kicks after touchdowns , two points for safeties, and five for field goals . Camp's innovations in the area of point scoring influenced rugby union's move to point scoring in 1890. In 1887, game time was set at two-halves of 45 minutes each. Also in 1887, two paid officials—a referee and an umpire —were mandated for each game. A year later,
10120-427: The sheer number of fans following major colleges provides a financial equalizer for the game, with Division I programs – the highest level – playing in huge stadiums, six of which have seating capacity exceeding 100,000 people. In many cases, college stadiums employ bench-style seating, as opposed to individual seats with backs and arm rests (although many stadiums do have a small number of chair back seats in addition to
10230-573: The sole competitors Princeton and Rutgers as co-champions. Similar retrospective analysis was undertaken in the 1940s by Bill Schroeder of the Helms Athletic Foundation and in Deke Houlgate's The Football Thesaurus in 1954. 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
10340-497: The sport. The records book, with consultation from various college football historians, contains a list of "major selectors" of national championships from throughout the history of college football, along with their championship selections. 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 criterion for
10450-499: The sports sections of each agency's subscribing newspapers across the country. The team ranking No. 1 in each agency's final poll of the season was awarded that agency's national championship. National championships are often stated to be "consensus" when the two major polls are in agreement with their selections. 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,
10560-487: The state of Tennessee . The 29th also saw the first instance of the Army–Navy Game . Navy won 24–0. Rutgers was first to extend the reach of the game. An intercollegiate game was first played in the state of New York when Rutgers played Columbia on November 2, 1872. It was also the first scoreless tie in the history of the fledgling sport. Yale football starts the same year and has its first match against Columbia,
10670-412: The system's post-bowl final rankings show Minnesota first and LSU fourth. The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists the Williamson System as having selected Pittsburgh in 1937. However the system's post-bowl final rankings show California first and Pittsburgh second. The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists the Williamson System as having selected TCU alone in 1938. However
10780-608: The system's post-bowl final rankings show a tie between TCU and Tennessee. The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists the Williamson System as having selected Tennessee in 1940. However the system's post-bowl final rankings show Stanford first and Tennessee sixth. The NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists the Billingsley Report as having selected Army in 1944 and Ohio State and Army in 1945. According to Billingsley's official website, these selection years are reversed. Kansas' 1960 defeat of Missouri
10890-466: The two schools organized a game for October 23, 1869, but it was rained out. Students of the University of Virginia were playing pickup games of the kicking-style of football as early as 1870, and some accounts even claim it organized a game against Washington and Lee College in 1871; but no record has been found of the score of this contest. Due to scantiness of records of the prior matches some will claim Virginia v. Pantops Academy November 13, 1887, as
11000-473: Was also the first time one team scored over 100 points and the opposing team was shut out. The next week, Princeton outscored Lafayette 140 to 0. The first intercollegiate game in the state of Vermont happened on November 6, 1886, between Dartmouth and Vermont at Burlington, Vermont . Dartmouth won 91 to 0. Penn State played its first season in 1887, but had no head coach for their first five years, from 1887 to 1891. The teams played its home games on
11110-503: Was at the time a patch of land at the northern point of the Harvard campus, bordered by Everett and Jarvis Streets to the north and south, and Oxford Street and Massachusetts Avenue to the east and west. Harvard beat McGill in the "Boston Game" on the Thursday and held McGill to a 0–0 tie on the Friday. The Harvard students took to the rugby rules and adopted them as their own, The games featured
11220-527: Was felt they would dominate the Association. Penn State won the championship with a 4–1–0 record. Bucknell's record was 3–1–1 (losing to Franklin & Marshall and tying Dickinson). The Association was dissolved prior to the 1892 season. The first nighttime football game was played in Mansfield, Pennsylvania on September 28, 1892, between Mansfield State Normal and Wyoming Seminary and ended at halftime in
11330-556: Was looking to pick "a twenty" to play a game of football against Columbia. This "twenty" never played Columbia, but did play twice against Princeton. Princeton won both games 6 to 0. The first of these happened on November 11, 1876, in Philadelphia and was the first intercollegiate game in the state of Pennsylvania . Brown entered the intercollegiate game in 1878. The first game where one team scored over 100 points happened on October 25, 1884, when Yale routed Dartmouth 113–0. It
11440-604: Was overturned by the Big Eight Conference on December 8 (ineligible player). The reversal erased the only loss on Missouri's record. The national title count listed below is a culmination of all championship awarded since 1869, regardless of "consensus" or non-consensus status, as listed in the table above according to the selectors deemed to be "major" as listed in the official NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records . The totals can be said to be disputed. Individual schools may claim national championships not accounted for by
11550-542: Was played at Princeton a week later under Princeton's own set of rules (one notable difference was the awarding of a "free kick" to any player that caught the ball on the fly, which was a feature adopted from The Football Association's rules; the fair catch kick rule has survived through to modern American game). Princeton won that game by a score of 8 – 0. Columbia joined the series in 1870 and by 1872 several schools were fielding intercollegiate teams, including Yale and Stevens Institute of Technology . Columbia University
11660-590: Was the 1881 Michigan team , which played at Harvard, Yale and Princeton. The nation's first college football league, the Intercollegiate Conference of Faculty Representatives (also known as the Western Conference), a precursor to the Big Ten Conference , was founded in 1895. Led by coach Fielding H. Yost , Michigan became the first "western" national power. From 1901 to 1905, Michigan had
11770-638: Was the first game west of the Mississippi River . November 30, 1905, saw Chicago defeat Michigan 2 to 0. Dubbed "The First Greatest Game of the Century", it broke Michigan's 56-game unbeaten streak and marked the end of the "Point-a-Minute" years. Organized collegiate football was first played in the state of Virginia and the south on November 2, 1873, in Lexington between Washington and Lee and VMI . Washington and Lee won 4–2. Some industrious students of
11880-470: Was the first to be awarded the trophy, in 1924 . 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
11990-487: Was the only major selector to choose them. Their schools use 17 of Davis' singular selections to claim national titles. His work has been criticized for having a heavy Eastern bias, with little regard for the South and the West Coast. 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
12100-488: Was the third school to field a team. The Lions traveled from New York City to New Brunswick on November 12, 1870, and were defeated by Rutgers 6 to 3. The game suffered from disorganization and the players kicked and battled each other as much as the ball. Later in 1870, Princeton and Rutgers played again with Princeton defeating Rutgers 6–0. This game's violence caused such an outcry that no games at all were played in 1871. Football came back in 1872, when Columbia played Yale for
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