BCS National Championship Game

However, beginning with the 2006 season, the BCS National Championship Game was added as a separate contest, played after New Year's Day.

^Notre Dame's loss in the 2012 BCS national title game was later vacated due to the use of Ineligible players

** Alabama defeated fellow SEC member LSU in the 2012 BCS Championship Game, resulting in both a win and loss for the conference.

Critics lamented that the participants were selected based upon polls, computer rankings, popularity and human biases, and not by on-field competition, as in other major sports and all other levels of college football, which employed tournament-format championships.

Without any objective criteria for evaluation of the teams, the BCS forced voters to impose their own standards and tiebreakers.

The following season, undefeated Auburn, Boise State, and Utah teams were left out of the national title game (the Orange Bowl).

In 2008, Utah was excluded from the BCS championship for a second time despite being the only undefeated FBS team and finished second in the final AP poll behind Florida.

In 2009, five schools finished the regular season undefeated: Alabama, Texas, Cincinnati, TCU, and Boise State; however, the BCS formula selected traditional powers Alabama and Texas to participate in the BCS National Championship Game.

[7] Adding to the controversy were comments made by the president of Ohio State University, Gordon Gee, who said that teams which played "the little sisters of the poor" instead of the "murderer's row" of teams in the automatic qualifier conferences did not deserve any national title game consideration.

On June 24, 2009, the BCS presidential oversight committee rejected the Mountain West Conference's proposed eight-team playoff plan.

The championship game is played approximately a week later at a neutral site selected through a competitive bidding process.

The American Football Coaches Association (AFCA) participated in a weekly Coaches' Poll published by USA Today; for its final poll of the season, the AFCA was contractually bound to select the BCS National Champion as its No.