Selma - if they have nine now, then by that same standard how many could we claim now...?

(Asking for a friend.)

I think the entire discussion is ridiculous at every level INCLUDING (to a point) on our part.
When I first became an Alabama fan, it was understood 1961 was our first national championship. I can show you article after article (and I have seen one in the Alabama student newspaper in early 1962) saying 1961 was our first national championship. I have mug after celebratory glass after commemorative whatever purchased before 1986 that shows we had six national championships.
So how did we get here? A guy at Alabama with a "Notre Dame inferiority complex" wanted us to have more titles than they so he began hunting every specious suggestion Alabama won a national championship from whatever source he could find. Had he not been so consumed with winning the war after it was long over, he might have done well. The 1941 claim is so ludicrous, so preposterous, so beyond any level of defense that I can do little more than roll my eyes that anyone ever claimed it.
But then again a number of our Johnny-come-lately after-the-fact defenders (most of whom were not around when the title claims suddenly doubled overnight) have a vested interest in not retracting a claim once made, which has led to comments every bit as absurd like, "we should stop recognizing 1941 but take 1945." In other words, "we refuse to admit this was a bad idea and we can't jiggle the numbers so this is my creative solution to this problem."
Alabama has - probably - the most glorious history on the field of any team in the history of college football INCLUDING Notre Dame, whose legendary status has taken a hit now that they've gone 37 years without a national championship. We don't have to live out the "Southern inferiority complex" by making over-the-top claims. Okay, there will never be a "Knute Rockne: All-American" movie about us but that was an accident of timing and history and the coincidence that one of the stars later wound up President. And yet the moment someone makes a claim, the Alabama response is, "Well how many MORE can we claim," which sounds like a certain person obsessed with crowd sizes.
According to John MacCallum, who wrote a series of fine books on all of the conferences between 1970 and 1980, NOTRE DAME was the first team to retroactively claim a national championship via Dickinson months after the 1924 season ended and used it to tout their program. Notre Dame's fame rests largely on their proximity to Chicago (at the time the second largest city in the US), where most of the non-New York sportswriters lived - and Rockne and the Irish understood the importance of their games being on radio.
Now having said that, there's an obvious difference in what Auburn did and what Alabama did - because Alabama did not claim national titles where their fan base or school had cried like babies about being "robbed" by the poll voters. The "old" claims of Auburn - 1910, 1913, 1914 - I mean, who really cares? I'm sure I can see in THEIR student newspaper where 1957 was their first national title, too. But 1983 is like Alabama claiming 1977, which we don't do. And 1993 is the essence of victimhood. Keep this in mind: Auburn both then AND NOW insists that the Eric Ramsey scandal was manufactured by the University of Alabama because of the four Iron Bowl losses in 1986-89. I wish I was kidding, but I'm not. So, you see, their probation in 1993 was in their minds undeserved, it was Alabama's fault, and this is the way to stick it in Alabama's face as well as have another 2009-10 scenario where we win and then they win, too.
And of course, the Fambly is right there to say, "But what about Alabama." But what about Alabama? Alabama did not claim national championships years after the fact after whining about losing them. Only Auburn did that.
Auburn logic goes like this: You can only be the fan of a school you attended but you can claim a national championship you cried that you didn't win.
And I think that says the whole thing right there.