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The history of college football's national champions in one handy GIF

With the college football season upon us, we thought it was a great time to provide an animated history lesson of all the national champions in college football history.

That’s right, in one GIF, we give you every national champion beginning with the 1869 season (and what a crazy two-game season that was, amiright?) all the way to the reigning champion Ohio State Buckeyes.

An animated look at all of college football's national champions.
An animated look at all of college football's national champions.

Some cool notes about this:

  • There was no national champion in 1871 because there were no games. The two seasons before that were two-game seasons because of the limited teams that had the sport, but there was difficulty scheduling games in 1871. It is the only season since 1869 that did not have a national champion.

  • The first polls to choose the national champion were started by Caspar Whitney from Harper’s Weekly, Charles E. Patterson from Leslie’s Weekly and the New York Sun.

  • Dickinson System, developed by Illinois economics professor Frank Dickinson, was the first widely recognized polling system and crowned national champions from 1926 to 1940. However, Notre Dame coach Knute Rockne ask Dickinson to use his formula on the 1924 and 1925 seasons, which are championships the Irish claim.

  • The Ivy League dominated the early championships and current Ivy League schools boast 48 titles, the last in 1927.

  • Since the inception of the BCS in 1998, only two teams — USC and Alabama — have been back-to-back champions and USC has its 2004 title vacated because of a violation of NCAA rules.

A hearty thank you to Eric Orvieto for putting this wonderful GIF together and to SportsLogos.net for the art.