Should a team that doesn't win its conf. champ. play in the BCS Champ. Game?

No

 

Maybe

 

Obviously not since Army, Notre Dame and Pitt, to name three, were independents.

 

Yes, but of those that were in a conference at the time ...?

 

thoughts? yeah, the bulldogs suck monstrously.

 

Right. You hear me. If we're going to be so literal about this thread, then most of the people voting are automatically ruling out independents from being in the BCS championship game.

I'll ask it another way: Did every national champion that was a member of a conference before 1998 win its conference in its national championship season?

 

I'll say this, after reading a column that suggested Texas Tech could still get in the title game. After seeing Tech get treated like they did on Saturday, there is absolutely no way that team should be anywhere near a national title game.

 

Absolutely no way.

The 2003 Sooners were an abomination.

 

I agree, and I'm a Sooners fan. I couldn't believe it when they lost the B12 title game and still got their ticket punched.

We've got a good chance of another split championship this year, especially if OU wins in vanilla fashion against Okie Lite and stays No. 2 in the AP poll, and Texas holds on to No. 2 in the BCS and then beats Mizzou. But it'll take a super blowout of the Aggies to keep Texas at No. 2 because of SOS. Otherwise OU jumps to No. 2 and plays Mizzou in the B12 game.

 

Who cares? There is no such thing as a college football national champion. There used to be an "unofficial" or "mythical" national champ selected by polls. There is now the winner of the BCS championship game-a worthy team that is NOT a national champion by any accepted definition of the term.
Why is this system even given the legitimacy of arguing about it? It's about as much a "championship" as any of the WBC/WBA/USSR hemidemicruiserweight titles in boxing.
Nothing against the game. As exhibitions go, it's fine.

 

Since Charlie Brown's question was bugging me, and nobody's posted the answer, I started looking it up.

Other than independents, the last team I can find that claims a somewhat-legitimate share of the national championship but DID NOT win its conference title was Ole Miss in 1959. ... (Georgia won the SEC that year, while the Rebs finished No. 1 in the Berryman, Dunkel and Sagarin polls. Syracuse claimed the top spot in the more recognized AP/UPI rankings.)

In 1951, Michigan State claimed a share of the national championship -- and in 1952 won the consensus national championship -- but didn't win the Big Ten either year because the conference did not allow Sparty to contend for the championship (and, of course, a coveted Rose Bowl berth) until they had been in the conference for at least five years (MSU didn't begin conference play until 1953.)

In 1950, Tennessee finished No. 1 in a few different polls (Billingsley, DeVold, Dunkel, NCF), but lost out to Bear Bryant's Kentucky team in the SEC standings. Oklahoma claimed the AP/UPI championships.

In 1936, Minnesota won the consensus national championship, but Northwestern was the Big Ten champion by virtue of a 7-0 head-to-head win in Evanston (handing Minny its first loss in three years.) The Gophers only allowed two other teams to score all season, and were voted No. 1 by AP, NCF, Dickinson, etc.

Might be a couple more before that, but not many. Anyway, it's rare -- but it wouldn't be the first time.

 

A different Sagarin, right? Jeff Sagarin didn't come along until the mid-1980s.

Or did he go back and retroactively compute seasons?