The 1978 NCAA Division I-A football season was the first season of Division I-A football; Division I-A was created in 1978 from the splitting of Division I for football only. The season came down to a rare #1 vs. #2 post-season meeting as #1 Penn State and #2 Alabama met in the New Year's Day Sugar Bowl. The game is most remembered for Alabama's goal line stand with four minutes left in the game. On fourth down and a foot, Alabama managed to keep Penn State out of the end zone and went on to win 14-7. Keith Jackson, who did the play by play for ABC, called it the greatest game he'd ever seen. 76,824 people packed the Louisiana Superdome, which was tremendously loud.
Alabama's only loss that year was 24-14 in Birmingham to Southern California. Both schools claim this year as a national title year. Alabama claimed the national title because it defeated top-ranked Penn State on the field. USC claimed the title because it defeated Alabama in the regular season and also finished with only one loss. The AP Poll and most other voting outlets crowned Alabama as national champion, while the UPI coaches' poll selected USC. This was the first year of the Pacific-10 Conference, as the Pac-8 added Arizona schools the University of Arizona and Arizona State University.
Read more about 1978 NCAA Division I-A Football Season: Rules Changes For 1978, September, October, November, December, Conference Standings, #1 and #2 Progress, Notable Rivalry Games, National Champion, Final AP and UPI Rankings, Heisman Trophy Voting, Other Major Awards
Famous quotes containing the words division, football and/or season:
“O, if you raise this house against this house
It will the woefullest division prove
That ever fell upon this cursed earth.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“You can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a BEER.”
—Frank Zappa (1940–1993)
“The theater is a baffling business, and a shockingly wasteful one when you consider that people who have proven their worth, who have appeared in or been responsible for successful plays, who have given outstanding performances, can still, in the full tide of their energy, be forced, through lack of opportunity, to sit idle season after season, their enthusiasm, their morale, their very talent dwindling to slow gray death. Of finances we will not even speak; it is too sad a tale.”
—Ilka Chase (1905–1978)