(10-23-2019 08:27 AM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(10-23-2019 08:16 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  

(10-22-2019 01:33 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  From https://americanrx.blogspot.com/2015/08/...hamps.html

there are three teams in the FBS with [recognized] national titles which are not in a P5 league; two of them are in the American Athletic Conference (AAC), the third is independent:

National Championships
SMU, 3 - 1935, 1981, 1982
Army, 3 - 1944, 1945, 1946
Navy, 1 - 1926

I remember 1982, and Penn State was the national champion that year.

I also remember 1981, and Clemson was the national champion that year.

SMU was the national champion neither of those years. The AP and UPI polls determined the national champions at that time, the only time anyone ever talked about a "split" championship was if they differed, e.g., in 1978, when the AP picked Alabama and the UPI picked USC.

Upon further review, the call is reversed - those SMU championship claims are pretty flimsy! I'd probably give more credence to UCF's recent claim - at least they were undefeated! (SMU was not)

Sorry if it seems I'm picking at you, but the notion of schools retroactively claiming titles, or doing so in the present day, based on flimsy nobody polls just because the NCAA has a list of 30 of them gets my goat, LOL.

But FWIW, SMU was undefeated in 1982. They had 11 wins and a tie, the only team that finished in the top 10 that didn't lose. They won the SWC and beat #6 Pitt, a loaded team with Dan Marino that was ranked #1 part of the year, in the Cotton Bowl. National champ Penn State did have a loss, they were 11-1. SMU was not an outsider-cinderella, they started the season ranked #6, never fell lower than #8, and finished at #2. They were a big-time contender all season long.

Given that they played a real "P5" schedule that year, whereas 2017 UCF did not, I would say that SMU 1982 had a much stronger argument for being voted national champ than did UCF in 2017, who has no claim at all.

Nevertheless, the culture of college football then was that whether you have an argument or not, it doesn't matter, who the polls picked decided it. Pointing at a single computer or lesser poll and claiming a national title on that basis was regarded as sheer nonsense.

I can assure you that the custom of the time was, if you were an SMU, to gnash your teeth and shout that your team was "robbed" by the pollsters, not to hang a banner and pretend that you were voted national champs when you weren't.

E.g., I will go to my grave thinking that 1993 Notre Dame and 1994 Penn State were totally deserving of being voted #1 by at least one of the two major polls, and that they were robbed that it didn't happen. But they weren't, so they weren't the national champs those years.