College Football
| “ | If there are any Big Ten teams that shoot for a national championship, they're damn fools...You play to win the Big Ten championship, and if you win it and go to the Rose Bowl and win it, then you've had a great season. If they choose to vote you number one, then you're the national champion. But a national champion is a mythical national champion, and I think you guys ought to know that. It's mythical. | ” |
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—Bo Schembechler of Michigan, July 1989 |
"Mythical national champion" is a term used since at least 1921 for a championship won by a NCAA Division I football team, especially for titles won before the current Bowl Championship Series (BCS) system began in 1998. Before the BCS, polls in which coaches and/or sportwriters voted, such as the AP, UPI, and USA Today polls, awarded championships. This led to seasons in which two or even more teams could claim to have won a national championship.
The BCS attempts to eliminate uncertainty by ranking college teams and inviting the top two teams at the end of the regular season to play in a championship game. These teams are determined by the BCS ranking formula, which itself uses a combination of human voter polls and computer rankings. The process of selecting the two best teams for the BCS championship game has, nonetheless, resulted in controversy almost every season of its existence.
Read more about this topic: Mythical National Championship
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