[2][3][4][5][6] Due to the lack of an official NCAA title, determining the nation's top college football team has often engendered controversy.

[13] Some of the earliest contemporaneous rankings can be traced to Caspar Whitney in Harper's Weekly, J. Parmly Paret in Outing,[14] Charles Patterson,[15] and New York newspaper The Sun.

"Claimed intercollegiate championships were limited to various selections and rankings, as the nature of the developing and increasingly violent full-contact sport made it impossible to schedule a post-season tournament to determine an "official" or undisputed champion.

[18] The Veteran Athletes of Philadelphia put up the Bonniwell Trophy for the national championship in 1919[19] under the stipulation that it was only "to be awarded in such years as produces a team whose standing is so preeminent as to make its selection as champion of America beyond dispute."

Chicago clothing manufacturer Jack F. Rissman donated a trophy for the system's national championship in 1926 onward, first awarded to Stanford prior to their tie with Alabama in the Rose Bowl.

[22][23] The large silver Erskine trophy was last awarded to USC on the field in Pasadena following their "national championship game" victory over Tulane in the 1932 Rose Bowl.

[14] Similar retrospective analysis was undertaken in the 1940s by Bill Schroeder of the Helms Athletic Foundation and in Deke Houlgate's The Football Thesaurus in 1954.

The first "split" national championship between the major polls occurred in 1954, when the writers selected Ohio State and the coaches chose UCLA.

[30] Both wire services originally conducted their final polls at the end of the regular season and prior to any bowl games being played.

[36] Calls for a college football playoff were frequently made by head coach Joe Paterno of Penn State, whose independent teams finished the 1968, 1969, and 1973 seasons unbeaten, untied, and with Orange Bowl victories yet were left without a single major national title.

[42] The BCS victors were annually awarded The Coaches' Trophy "crystal football" on the field immediately following the championship game.

The criterion for the NCAA's designation is that the poll or selector be "national in scope, either through distribution in newspaper, television, radio and/or computer online".

[8] The NCAA records book divides its major selectors into three categories: those determined by mathematical formula, human polls, and historical research.

[154] lThe NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists the Williamson System as having selected TCU and LSU as co-champions for 1935.

[73] mThe NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists the Williamson System as having selected LSU in 1936.

[75] nThe NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists the Williamson System as having selected Pittsburgh in 1937.

[76] oThe NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists the Williamson System as having selected TCU alone in 1938.

[78] pThe NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book lists the Williamson System as having selected Tennessee in 1940.

[12] These wire services began ranking college football teams in weekly polls, which were then promptly published in the sports sections of each agency's subscribing newspapers across the country.

The news media began running their own polls of sports writers to determine who was, by popular opinion, the best football team in the country at the end of the season.

January voters were impressed by Michigan's 49–0 win over common opponent USC in the Rose Bowl and elevated the Wolverines above the Irish in the special post-bowl poll.

[191][192] In the next season, 1966, neither of the top two teams (Notre Dame and Michigan State) were attending bowl games so no post-bowl poll was taken,[193] even after two-time defending AP national champion No.

The nature of the board, giving each section of the country equal representation, avoids the sectional bias and ballot box stuffing for which other football polls have been criticized.Each season's final Coaches Poll was initially published following the regular season and did not take bowl game results into account; the UP/UPI national champion lost its bowl game 8 times between 1950 and 1973.

Of the current 120+ Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS, formerly Division I-A) schools, only 30 have won at least a share of a national title by the AP or Coaches poll.

Of the 20 teams, only 7 have won five or more national titles: Alabama, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, USC, Miami (FL), Nebraska, and Ohio State.

[35] Despite the promotional billing, in several instances there were plausible scenarios for a third team to be selected as national champion by the major selectors, depending on outcomes of other games.

For the 2006 season onward the BCS National Championship Game became its own separate contest, played one week later at the site of the bowl in the same rotation.

If a championship is not mentioned by a school for any particular season, regardless of whether it was awarded by a selector or listed in a third-party publication such as the official NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records, it is not considered to be claimed by that institution.

In addition to the NCAA-designated "major selectors" listed above, various other people and organizations have selected national champions in college football.

Teams in the following table were selected by people or organizations not listed as a "major selector" in the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision Records book.