This was fascinating to think back on. I recall those years pretty well, 85 being Perkins at Bama, 94 being coach Stallings of course, and that Franphony 2001 season.
Does anyone else think that, post-2020, anything "historical" is just lost for good now? Not speaking of only sports here; commonly held beliefs about society as a WHOLE just seemed to have been redrawn since 2020.
It's a pretty good marker of time, but a lot of the things that changed were headed that direction and sped up due to everyone being at home for months on end.
Anyone at any time can disparage anyone's "national championships" and folks would be hard pressed to defend them.
National championships before 1960 - in all honesty - aren't worth the paper they're printed on. I had a thread that covered every single national championship ever awarded starting with the AP poll in 1936, and prior to around 1950, it was simple: no Southern teams need apply. And then through 1957 - a problem exposed by Auburn of all people - you had the fact that ANY newspaper that was a member of the AP had a vote, so Auburn worked the phones and literally begged what they deemed "friendly" sources to vote for them, which resulted in the settling of the AP votes to only 48 votes (one vote per state, excluding the last two that were added in 1959). It eventually grew to around 70 votes before it was rendered moot by the BCS.
But even those awarded by the AP and UPI are, well, highly questionable at best. Unless you had an unusual circumstance like Pitt in 1976 or Clemson in 1981, the vote always went to "team with biggest historical reputation", which is why Alabama couldn't beat Notre Dame in a vote but couldn't lose to hardly anyone else, either.
Take 1978, for example. Alabama got mauled by USC on the football field, 24-14, and it wasn't even really all that close. Granted, Alabama turned the ball over six times is why they lost, but the game was at home. So given USC thumped Alabama head-to-head, lost to 9-3 Arizona St (in their first year in the newly expanded Pac-10), and wound up with a shared title.
WHY?
I've always thought there were four basic reasons that explain it:
1) Alabama had the bigger name than USC did.
2) In 1977, the argument for Notre Dame over Alabama was "they beat #1," and Alabama did beat #1.
3) there were sufficient reasons to think USC's win over Alabama was a bit of a fluke
4) among these were the fact USC won two games - Notre Dame and Michigan - thanks in large part to officiating blunders that effectively turned two USC losses into wins.
But in all honesty - in the end, you won national championships based on if you'd won prior national championships. Alabama couldn't win that one in 1966, but they couldn't lose it in 1978, either.
(The part everyone forgets......Oklahoma had the same record as Alabama but was ranked lower because Alabama had beaten Nebraska and OU failed the first time. Of course, Nebraska was actually ranked ahead of Alabama despite a 20-3 blowout loss - until they lost to Mizzou in the "letdown" after beating OU).
