Few topics in sports blend together controversy, status, and interminable argument more seamlessly than college football national championships.
These days, FBS fans have a 12-team postseason courtesy of college football playoff expansion. But you don’t have to go back too far to find much more controversial championship selection methods.
In the late 1990s, 2000s, and early 2010s, there was the BCS. And for 50 years before that, college football fans outsourced the championship process to the opinions of the Associated Press. There was no real de jure championship process – only a major bowl game that everyone tabbed as a pseudo-championship game.
Prior to 1950, there was often spirited debate about who was the best team in a given year. And before 1936, when the AP Poll got involved in championship prognosticating, it was a total jungle.
And here I thought college football odds could be complicated.
Millions of college football fans are curious about which programs have won the most championships. Every week, search engines track thousands of requests for a list of college football national champions by year.
What those fans typically don’t want to do, though, is debate whether Vanderbilt was truly better than Iowa in 1922, or weigh how Lafayette’s disputed 1896 championship fits into the modern canon of college football.
I created this simplified dataset with that majority of fans in mind.
Here, I have ordered a table around how many championships a particular team has won since 1950. This data is in accordance with the NCAA’s own official record book, which relies on respected results from the Associated Press, UPI, FWAA, and USA Today, among others.
Most College Football National Championships (Division I FBS)
| Team | FBS Titles Since 1950 | Most Recent Claimed Championship | Total Claimed Championships |
| Alabama | 13 | 2020 | 18 |
| Ohio State | 7 | 2014 | 8 |
| Oklahoma | 7 | 2000 | 7 |
| USC | 6 (2004 vacated) | 2003 | 11 |
| Miami (FL) | 5 | 2001 | 5 |
| Nebraska | 5 | 1997 | 5 |
| Notre Dame | 5 | 1988 | 11 |
| LSU | 4 | 2019 | 4 |
| Texas | 4 | 2005 | 4 |
| Georgia | 3 | 2022 | 4 |
| Clemson | 3 | 2018 | 3 |
| Florida State | 3 | 2013 | 3 |
| Florida | 3 | 2008 | 3 |
| Michigan State | 3 | 1966 | 6 |
| Michigan | 2 | 2023 | 12 |
| Auburn | 2 | 2010 | 2 |
| Tennessee | 2 | 1998 | 6 |
| Penn State | 2 | 1986 | 2 |
| Washington | 1 | 1991 | 2 |
| Colorado | 1 | 1990 | 1 |
| Georgia Tech | 1 | 1990 | 4 |
| BYU | 1 | 1984 | 1 |
| Pittsburgh | 1 | 1976 | 9 |
| Arkansas | 1 | 1964 | 1 |
| Ole Miss | 1 | 1960 | 3 |
| Minnesota | 1 | 1960 | 7 |
| Syracuse | 1 | 1959 | 1 |
| Iowa | 1 | 1958 | 5 |
| UCLA | 1 | 1954 | 1 |
| Maryland | 1 | 1953 | 1 |
| Illinois | 0 | 1951* | 5 |
| Princeton | 0 | 1950* | 28 |
| Army | 0 | 1946* | 3 |
| Cornell | 0 | 1939* | 5 |
| Cal | 0 | 1937* | 5 |
| Yale | 0 | 1927* | 27 |
| Penn | 0 | 1924* | 7 |
| Harvard | 0 | 1919* | 7 |
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