Has Any College Football Team Won 3 National Championships in a Row?

In college football, championships often come in pairs. If a coaching staff connects on one or two great recruiting classes, it can form the backbone of a team that will have a solid two-year championship window.

That’s the story behind many modern national champions in NCAA football. Jim Harbaugh built Michigan up with elite talent, yielding three straight College Football Playoff appearances and the 2023 national championship. Alabama won plenty of titles under Nick Saban, including two in a row in the early 2010s.

Most recently, Georgia won back-to-back college football national championships at the ends of the 2021 and 2022 seasons. That included a brutal drubbing of TCU in the 2022 championship game, which was one of the biggest blowouts in College Football Playoff history.

But as the Bulldogs discovered, it’s really hard to win three in a row – especially after the NFL pillages dozens of your best players.

As former Georgia linebacker Jalon Walker noted during the 2023 preseason period, it’s been a long time since anyone won three championships in a row.

Jalon Walker shares his thoughts on Georgia pursuing a 3-peat and the potential of making history#UGA #GeorgiaFootball #JalonWalker #3peat #threepeat pic.twitter.com/2munIMIxhm

— UGASports.com (@ugasportscom) August 18, 2023

Has Any College Football Team Won 3 National Championships in a Row?

Dating back to 1900, Minnesota is the only team to win three national championships in a row, from 1934-36. 

The Minnesota Threepeat

Prior to the installation of the BCS system in 1998, national champions were voted on by a variety of media and sport organizations. Minnesota was awarded championship acclaim by both the Helms Athletic Foundation and the National Championship Foundation in all three years.

Other teams, like Yale, can claim three-peats from the period before 1900, but the competition was so narrow that such feats were more common. 

Back-to-Back National Champions: College Football 

Before Georgia repeated as champions in 2021-22, Alabama repeated as champions in 2011-12 during the early portion of Nick Saban’s crimson dynasty. 

Other back-to-back champs from the latter half of the 20th century include Nebraska (1994-95), Alabama again (1978-79), Texas (1969-70) and Oklahoma (1955-56).