CFB: A Mythical Champion

“A national champion is a mythical national champion, and I think you guys ought to know that. It’s mythical," said the late, great Bo Schembechler. But what was the legendary Michigan football coach exactly saying? To answer that we first must understand what a national champion is and that it is a team who is the best in their country. That being said, the NCAA does not officially grant a championship to the FBS bowl division, which is its biggest and most talented division.

​Since 1869 the phrase of “A National Champion” has been used. In college football’s biggest division, which is the FBS, the NCAA has not formally recognized a national champion. Which is incredibly odd considering the weaker division, known as the FCS, does have one. So one might ask why have a better system for the weaker division. As for the FBS, bowl games were created in 1902 with the Rose Bowl being the first one, so after all the creations of other bowl games the NCAA wanted to keep those since it was already established history.

The NCAA also has a lot more teams in the FBS than the FCS, so they wanted to give smaller schools and everyone in general an opportunity to have a championship and something to play for at the end of the season.​The most popular system of determining a national championship is the College Football Playoff. This was created in 2014 and took over the rather more-flawed BCS system. The CFP is a system that was signed off on by all of the teams in college football.

It features a committee of 13 people who serve a three-year term, but the term could be cut shorter or extended longer. It is a voting process between all of the members and they select at the end of the year the top four teams that should play each other to determine who exactly the best in the country is. As you could imagine, this would create a lot of controversy of who should get into the top four especially when there are 129 teams to choose from. What makes some teams stand out from others is their strength of schedule. How many games they have won and who they have beaten in those games boosts their resume.

The better teams you play and the better record you carry has been the deciding factor on if you are selected in or not. This system has been astronomically better after replacing the BCS system, which was where computer-generated rankings produced who it thought should be the top two teams. Those top two teams would then go on and face each other in the BCS national championship game. There are still other popular national championships in place such as the AP Poll, but those are just polls and no games are played to decide the winner of those trophies.

College football has the distinct chance of giving everybody a shot at a title regardless of what your record is. It can be very frustrating to teams that feel they are deserving to be national champion and it can be a huge break for some who barely snuck in. Personally, I think they should have a formal championship and eliminate the controversy surrounding it, much like the FCS division. Until they figure out a way to do that, on that December Saturday when the selection committee selects their top four, we will continue to scream and shout at who really is the national champion.

Photo Credit: CBS Sports.