History
We're all familiar now with the various college football polls, but before 1936 there were several systems for establishing a mythical national college football champion.
In 1926, Frank Dickinson, an economics professor at the University of Illinois, developed a system based on quality of opponents and scoring differentials, similar to many of today's "power rating" methods (except that he had to do it by hand instead of using a computer).
Dickinson chose national champions for 1924 and 1925, as well as 1926, and he continued selecting champions through 1940. Similar systems were devised by Dick Dunkel Sr. in 1929, by Paul Williams in 1932, and by Edward E. and Frank Litkenhous in 1934.
In 1936, the Associated Press began its annual poll of sportswriters and sportscasters. United Press initiated a poll of college coaches in 1950 and the International News Service began polling its own sportswriters in 1952. When they merged into United Press International, the coaches' poll became the UPI poll.
Other organizations got onto the poll bandwagon in the 1950s, most notably the Football Writers Association of America in 1954 and the National Football Foundation and Hall of Fame in 1959.
One problem these polls faced for many years was that they came out with their final results a few days after the regular season ended, and bowl games sometimes made those results look questionable.
The FWAA in 1955 began conducting its final poll after the bowls. AP did the same in 1965, then went back to a pre-bowl poll for the next two seasons. Since 1968, however, the final AP poll has been taken after the bowl results. The NFFHF began doing so in 1971, UP in 1974.
In the meantime, the UP/UPI poll of coaches became the American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) poll, which moved to USA Today/CNN in 1991 and to USA Today/ESPN in 1997.
Two organizations, the College Football Researchers Association (CFRA) and the National Championship Foundation (NCF), conducted polls of their members to determine national champions beginning with the 1869 season, when the first college "football" game was played--even though it was actually soccer.
The Helms Athletic Foundation (HAF) conducted a similar poll of members beginning in 1883, the first year that American football used a point scoring system.
The NCAA has consistently turned down proposals for a Division I-A football playoff. In 1992, four major bowl games (the Cotton, Fiesta, Orange and Sugar), five major college conferences, and independent Notre Dame formed the Bowl Coalition to set up a post-season championship bowl game between the two top-ranked teams in the the Associated Press and USA Today/CNN polls.
The Bowl Coalition was succeeded by the Bowl Alliance in 1995 and the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) in 1998. The concept has worked out fairly well most years, but problems have arisen in other years. Every time there's a problem the media renews a call for a genuine playoff system, as in Divisions I-AA, II, and III.
In the following list of champions, the consensus winner is shown first, if there was a consensus. Other winners are shown afterward, with the selector(s) in parentheses. A -T after a selector indicates that two or more teams were tied in that poll.
The key to the selectors:
- AF = American Football Coaches Association
- AP = Asssociated Press
- CF = College Football Researchers Association
- Di = Dickenson
- Du = Dunkel
- FW = Football Writers Association of America
- HF = Helms Athletic Foundation
- IN = International News Service
- Li = Litkenhous
- NC = National Championship Foundation
- NF = National Football Foundation
- UP = United Press/UP International
- Wi = Williamson