Prior to the 2004 season, the SOS was determined in the American college football Bowl Championship Series (BCS) as illustrated at right, where OR is the opponents' record and OOR is the opponents' record. If both teams were equally ranked then the team with the higher SOS would win. The BCS formula did not consider non-conference games, so if one team had more victories over lower-ranked opponents than another, they would have a higher ranking.
The next year, the National Football League (NFL) adopted a similar system called the Power Rankings that used identical criteria except that all of the games played during the season were considered.
In 2006, the BCS system was replaced by the College Football Playoff (CFP), which uses a four-team tournament to determine a national champion. For the first time since 1999, when the Bowl Coalition came into existence, every championship game was contested between ranked teams. The CFP also includes an independent team that does not play conference games or against other independent teams. This team is allowed to gain access to the playoffs by winning their conference's bowl game. As a result, the independent team has never been relegated to or from which a team drops out of the playoff field.
The CFP was originally planned to begin in 2014, but it was postponed one year due to concerns about competitive balance in college football.
The 2004 regular season began on August 28, 2004, and concluded on December 4, 2004. The Orange Bowl, which served as the season's BCS National Championship Game, closed the postseason on January 4, 2005.
Texas' opponent was Michigan, whom the Longhorns were facing for the first time. Texas and Michigan each have more than a century of football heritage. The two teams' meeting set a college football record for the most games played by two opponents before facing each other for the first time.
It was also the first year where the national semifinal matches were selected in part by the overall seeding of the best team in each regional. The tournament's top four teams were Kentucky, Duke, Stanford, and Saint Joseph's.
Sometimes we remember the squad that didn't win it all the most. This year marks the 23rd season since the BCS era began in 1998, a system that eventually gave way to the College Football Playoff but left us with some teams who are more famous for not winning the national championship.
The BCS was created by the Big Ten, Pac-12, SEC and Notre Dame to give their champion the same recognition as those from the other major conferences. The idea was that if these four teams agreed on an overall winner, they would share $40 million of the revenue earned during the season. If there was a tie at the top, then the team with the highest ranking would move on.
In its first season, the BCS title went to the Florida State Seminoles. The Big Ten's unbeaten season ended when Ohio State lost to Michigan in the final minute of the game. Miami (Fla.) defeated Virginia Tech in the first BCS title game. The only thing that stopped Miami from being undefeated was the fact that it lost to Virginia Military Institute (now known as VMI) back in 1944. The next year, the Pac-10 and SEC joined the BCS, giving it five conferences of 32 teams each. In 2004, the number of teams dropped to four because Nebraska refused to play Texas during the regular season unless Texas paid them money. This is where things got tricky because the Longhorns were voted #1 by both the AP and Coaches polls.
Let's look over the history of designating college football "National Champions" and see how we got here. Prior to the introduction of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) in 1998, the "National Champions" were chosen by various groups and charities. Most commonly, the winners of the Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl were selected as co-champions.
In 1901, Theodore Roosevelt appointed a committee of sports writers from across the country to select an official champion for college football. The New York Tribune published one list with Ohio State receiving all of the first-place votes and Iowa claiming second place. In 1902, the committee met again and this time they issued a formal statement announcing that Ohio State was the winner of the first season of college football. This is probably what you have heard if you listen to people talk about the origins of college football. However, it is not true!
It wasn't until years later that most colleges began to play annual games against each other for championship titles. In 1920, an organization called the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) was created to coordinate the rules and regulations for intercollegiate athletics among member institutions. One of its first tasks was to establish a plan for crowning a national champion. In 1921, the NCAA adopted a method called "mutual consent" where each conference could choose their own champion or wait for the NCAA to designate one for them.
This is a list of college football teams rated first in the Associated Press poll from its start in 1936 through January 12, 2021. This is no longer an FBS institution.
119. (1902 to 2020). 748-455-44 (W-L-T) records Conferences: ACC, Southern, and Indiana 22 conference championships Bowl record: 47 games, 25-22,.532 win-loss percentage (Major Bowls) Ranked in the AP Poll 30 times (preseason), 34 times (final), and 469 times total (Total) Stadium name: Memorial Stadium (cap. 81,500) Clemson, South Carolina is the location.
That Tigers squad was unbeaten that year, finishing 12-0 with a 22-15 Orange Bowl win against Nebraska. The College Football Playoff national title game is set to begin at 8 p.m. ET on Monday night at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome.
In 2016, Clemson defeated Alabama to win the school's second national title. With one second remaining in the game, QB Deshaun Watson fired the game-winning touchdown pass to WR Hunter Renfrow.
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