Bryant Drive

It’s a really depressing time to be a fan of just about any SEC school other than Alabama.  LSU, the second most successful program since Saban took over in Tuscaloosa, has to look back at the post-2007 years and wonder why all that hardware was left on the table.  Auburn is Auburning as hard as I’ve ever seen them Auburn.  Florida just got Utah’d.  UGA just had their best chance to win a national championship since before Herschel Walker developed an imaginary friend that lives in his pocket.  And, to top it all off, it’s almost impossible to make fun of Alabama right now. Alabama’s got the consensus best-Coach-in-the-land.  Alabama’s players rarely get in off-the-field trouble, and they uniformly represent themselves and their school well in media.  You had the statue to make fun of, and I agree it does look Andy Griffith begging for his life in a prison closet, but even that rings a bit hollow since he continued to back up his status with more wins.

No, Gomer, you don’t want to do this…

The one constant that the opponent message board rubble always fall back on, however, is Alabama “making up” national championships.  ”Alabama beat Western Kentucky?  They just claimed another championship.”

Alabama claims 14 championships as of this writing, and we are proud to tell you, 13 of them are perfectly defensible and legitimate.  That is because that, while there is no set-in-stone method for picking One Champion To Rule Them All in college football days of yore, the system that has been unofficially adopted among college football royalty is not as convoluted or dynamic as some would have you believe.

I Choose You, Princeton

For the sake of this discussion, I’m going to do something that is arbitrary and biased…because, let’s face it, college football’s national championship “system” has always been arbitrary and biased.  I’m going to pretend that college football began in 1925.  This isn’t to invalidate any claims earlier than this which schools may elect to make (Princeton University, YOUR 1869 national champs) or minimize any teams before this year (hey Auburn, you should really claim 1913); this is simply a discussion about Alabama’s national championships, and since 1925 was our first, that’s when our analysis will begin.

Here’s where things actually get a lot simpler.  Since we’re starting at 1925, there’s only an 11 year period where the water is so murky we can’t see the bottom.  That’s because 1936 marks the beginning of the “Poll Era.”  For better or worse, as we will discuss later, this solved a lot of problems (and caused some new ones).

So, how do we choose our 1925-1936 National Champions?  We’re going to go by a system that both Notre Dame and Alabama agree on (when it suits each)…and I think it’s a good system.  Undefeated Rose Bowl champions = national champions.  This is how Notre Dame claims its 1924 national championship…it won the 1924 Rose Bowl, and then didn’t go to another bowl game until the 1969 season’s Cotton Bowl.  Also, we do like to settle things on the field, don’t we?  While multiple selectors chose the 1925, 1926, 1930, and 1934 Alabama teams as national champions, all of these teams also won the Rose Bowl.  In addition, all 4 of these teams had as-good or better records than all other claimants to the crown.  Sorry, Boudreaux, these are legitimate titles.

Go To The Polls

In 1936, we got the AP poll.  Fourteen years later, we got the UPI poll, which would come to be the modern day Coaches’ Poll (we’re going to call it the UPI because that’s just 3 letters, aight?).  Let’s stop right here and address a little nuance.  At various times, the AP and UPI selected their champions prior to the bowl games.  Sometimes this hurt Alabama, sometimes this helped Alabama.  In any event, we are going to recognize the champion of each poll when that champion was chosen because that is the system at the time.  It’s like this…if you are driving on a stretch of highway with a speed limit of 55, and you get pulled over for going 65, it’s not a defense to say that said highway’s speed limit was 65 ten years ago.  Rules change.  Once upon a time, safeties were even allowed to tackle.  You’ve gotta live with the rules as they were at the time.

Moving on, our first claimed championship of the poll era was 1941…the whole point of this diatribe.  We’ll move right along and come back to that, because there’s not a lot to say about the next 9 championships.  I’ll break it down easy:  for every other post 1941 championship Alabama claims, the Tide was selected as a champion by either the AP or the UPI or both.  I don’t think there’s a school in America that DOESN’T claim such championships.  1961?  AP and UPI.  1964?  AP and UPI.  1965?  AP and UPI.  1973?  UPI.  1978?  AP.  1979?  AP and UPI.  1992, 2009, and 2011, AP, Coaches’ Poll, and every other legitimate selector.

So, if you’re mad at me for writing this…don’t be.  If anything, it’s a confirmation that a full 13 of Alabama’s 14 claimed titles would be claimed by absolutely any school in the nation.

Why Not 1941?

We now get to the Troublesome Title of 1941.  It is true that we didn’t claim this title until the 1980′s, but the same is true with our other pre-poll era titles that we have already established as legitimate.  The fact that the championships were not claimed until later does not, in itself, invalidate any claim.  The problem with 1941 is actually three-fold.  1)  It’s a poll era team that didn’t win a poll.  2)  Finishing position in the legitimate poll of that time.  3)  It doesn’t jive with 2011.  Hang in there with me on #3.

First, we have learned that the AP poll started in 1936.  Did they pick a national champion in 1941?  Yep…the AP, along with a vast majority of other contemporary selectors, chose Minnesota as the 41 national champs.  Minnesota went undefeated, won the Big 10 championship, and was #1 in the AP poll 7 out of the 8 weeks the poll was taken.

Meanwhile, Alabama finished the year 20th in the AP poll.  The Tide’s best win was in the Cotton Bowl versus #9 Texas A&M (Minnesota’s best win was over #5 Michigan in Ann Arbor).  Then, there were the two losses.  Alabama didn’t just lose to Mississippi State and Vanderbilt…the Tide didn’t score in either loss.  Bama ended up finishing 3rd in the SEC that year behind MSU and Tennessee.

Now, what does 1941 have to do with 2011?  The selector on which our claim is based.  Alabama’s 1941 championship is claimed based on being #1 in what some people incorrectly call the “Houlgate Poll.”  The Houlgate System was not a poll, but was, and is, a mathematical formula developed by Carroll “Deke” Houlgate.  How does the system works?  Like most proprietary football ranking formulas, we really don’t know.  Although Mr. Houlgate’s system ceased official publication in 1957, his family still puts out yearly rankings based on the system to this day.  Who did the system choose as the 2011 champions?  Your LSU Bayou Bengals.

From our research, we can’t find any other school in the nation that claims a championship solely based on landing the #1 spot in the Houlgate system (such as Notre Dame’s 1927 team).

What Does All This Mean?

Really, showing the folly in 1941, in my opinion, first underscores that the 13 other Alabama national championships are perfectly legitimate.  As for ’41, we purists are never going to get our way.  We (the University, that is), claims 1941, has literally set it in stone, and that’s never going to change.  I’ve made peace with it, and have decided to personally use it as a mental placeholder for other championships which may be have been earned, but not awarded.

Well, Beaumont, if you’ve made peace with it, why are you ranting about it?  Just for education, my friends…because as I have said about 9 times at this point, an understanding of 1941 helps one mount a substantive challenge to rivals that claim that Alabama claiming questionable championships is the rule.  Instead, 1941 shows that such a claim is the lone, lonely exception.