1982 NCAA Division I-A Football Season

The 1982 NCAA Division I-A football season saw Paul "Bear" Bryant retire as head coach at Alabama with 323 career victories in 38 seasons.

The Penn State Nittany Lions won their first consensus national championship, closing out an 11-1 season by defeating Georgia and Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker in the Sugar Bowl 27-23, and edging out undefeated SMU for the National Championship. It was Joe Paterno's first national championship, after three undefeated non-championship seasons.

UCLA moved from the LA Coliseum to the Rose Bowl and fulfilled a promise made by coach Terry Donahue by closing out their season there as well, beating Michigan in the post-season Rose Bowl game, 24-14.

It is also the year of “The Play”, a near impossible finish to the annual rivalry game between Cal and Stanford.

The Aloha Bowl premiered in Honolulu, Hawaii.

This was the first season the Ivy League competed at the I-AA (FCS) level. Through the 2009 season, the Ivy League has yet to participate in the post-season tournament, despite an automatic bid, citing academic concerns.

Read more about 1982 NCAA Division I-A Football Season:  Conference Standings, Notable Rivalry Games, September, October, November, #1 and #2 Progress, Bowl Games, Final AP Poll, Final Coaches Poll, Other Major Awards

Famous quotes containing the words division, football and/or season:

    If the technology cannot shoulder the entire burden of strategic change, it nevertheless can set into motion a series of dynamics that present an important challenge to imperative control and the industrial division of labor. The more blurred the distinction between what workers know and what managers know, the more fragile and pointless any traditional relationships of domination and subordination between them will become.
    Shoshana Zuboff (b. 1951)

    In football they measure forty-yard sprints. Nobody runs forty yards in basketball. Maybe you run the ninety-four feet of the court; then you stop, not on a dime, but on Miss Liberty’s torch. In football you run over somebody’s face.
    Donald Hall (b. 1928)

    Utterly frozen is this youthful lady,
    Even as the snow that lies within the shade;
    For she is no more moved than is the stone
    By the sweet season which makes warm the hills
    Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)