Every College Football National Champion Since 1936, and Who Has Won the Most

Most national championships in college football by school

Alabama's 12 AP titles run from 1961 to 2020. Notre Dame has eight, the last in 1988, Oklahoma seven, Ohio State six, and Southern California (USC) and Miami five each. Of the 28 programs that have finished No. 1, 20 have done it more than once; the other eight are Brigham Young (BYU), Colorado, Indiana, Maryland, Michigan State, Syracuse, Texas A&M and Texas Christian (TCU). In the coaches' poll, which began in 1950, Alabama leads with 11, ahead of Oklahoma and USC with six, and three schools have a coaches' title but no AP title: UCLA (1954), Georgia Tech (1990) and Washington (1991).

Since 1998 every season has ended with a title game, the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) game through 2013 and the CFP final since. Alabama has won six of those 28 games, and Louisiana State (LSU) and Ohio State three each. USC won the 2004 game, but the BCS later vacated that title.

College football national champions list by year

Each AP champion is the No. 1 of that season's final poll in College Poll Archive, and all 90 match the NCAA's FBS record book, which also lists the coaches' poll champions; the playoff finals come from the CFP's own list. The table names the coaches' or BCS champion only where it differs from the AP's.

Split national championships and the BCS

The AP and the coaches have named different champions 11 times since 1950, 10 of them before the BCS. Both polls once voted before the bowls, the coaches through 1973 and the AP through 1967 except in 1965, as Wikipedia's history of the coaches' poll notes, so a champion could still lose. Oklahoma (1950), Tennessee (1951), Maryland (1953), Minnesota (1960) and Alabama (1964) all lost bowl games after topping both polls, and the coaches' champions Michigan State (1965), Texas (1970) and Alabama (1973) did too.

Six splits came after both polls moved past the bowls. In 1974 the coaches began leaving out teams on NCAA probation, and unbeaten Oklahoma, the AP champion, was missing from their final poll, which USC topped; the last split before the BCS came in 1997, Michigan in the AP and Nebraska with the coaches. In nine of the 11 splits, the coaches' champion was second in the final AP poll. The BCS was launched in 1998 to match its top two teams in a bowl game in the absence of NCAA-sponsored playoffs, and its one split came in 2003: LSU won the BCS game and the coaches' vote, USC the AP. The playoff era has had none.

National championships by conference and by decade

By the conference each champion played in that season, AP titles break down like this:

• Southeastern Conference (SEC): 25 AP titles, 13 of them in the 20 seasons since 2006, including seven in a row from 2006 to 2012, and 15 of the 28 BCS and CFP title games.
• Independents: 19, none since Miami in 1989.
• Big Ten: 14. Its three straight since 2023, by Michigan, Ohio State and Indiana, match its run from 1940 to 1942.
• Big Seven, Big Eight and Big 12: 13, by Oklahoma, Nebraska, Colorado and Texas.
• Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC): seven, by Maryland, Clemson and Florida State.
• Others: USC's five in the Pac-12's forerunners, four in the Southwest Conference, Miami's two in the Big East and BYU's one in the Western Athletic Conference.

The 1950s, 1990s and 2000s each had eight different champions, while Notre Dame won four of the 10 titles of the 1940s and Alabama four of the 2010s. The 1950s brought seven first-time champions and the 1980s five, the last of them BYU in 1984; the 2000s and 2010s brought none. The 16 BCS seasons produced 11 different title-game winners, and the 12 playoff seasons seven.

First-time national champions, repeats and long waits

Indiana ended the longest wait for a new AP champion: 28 seasons, from 1997 to 2024, after Florida's first title in 1996. The longest before that was nine seasons, from 1971 to 1979. The first four seasons of the poll had four different champions: Minnesota, Pittsburgh, TCU and Texas A&M.

Champions have repeated 12 times, most recently Georgia in 2021 and 2022, but no team has won three AP titles in a row. The longest wait between titles is Auburn's 53 years, from 1957 to 2010; Michigan (1948 to 1997) and LSU (1958 to 2007) waited 49.

The 12-team College Football Playoff champions and the favorites

Both champions of the 12-team playoff came from the Big Ten. Ohio State won in 2024 as the No. 8 seed, the lowest-seeded champion yet, and is the only one to win four playoff games, beating Tennessee, Oregon, Texas and Notre Dame. Indiana, the No. 1 seed in 2025, had a first-round bye, then beat Alabama 38-3 in the Rose Bowl, Oregon 56-22 in the Peach Bowl and Miami 27-21 in the final at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla.; its 16 wins are the most by any AP champion.

No. 1 seeds have won five of the 12 playoff titles, and six champions went unbeaten. Ohio State, at 14-2, is the only one with two losses; we have measured separately how many losses a playoff team can have. As for the polls' favorites, the AP preseason No. 1 has won 11 of the 76 titles since 1950, and the No. 1 going into the bowls finished there in 31 of 58 seasons from 1968 to 2025.

The 2026 national championship race in the AP poll

In the AP poll of Oct. 18, 2026, Miami (Fla.), 6-0, is No. 1 with 40 of the 70 first-place votes, ahead of BYU, 6-0, and Ohio State, 6-1; Indiana, the defending champion, is sixth at 6-1. Twelve of the 25 ranked teams have won an AP title, 52 between them. Four of the top 10 never have: Ole Miss, Texas Tech, UCLA and Utah, though UCLA has its 1954 coaches' title.

The selection committee's first ranking comes out on Nov. 3, Selection Day is Dec. 6 and the final is in Las Vegas on Jan. 25, 2027, according to the CFP. Until then the weekly poll is on our college football rankings and every game on the FBS schedule.

College football national champions: frequently asked questions

Who has won the most college football national championships? Alabama, with 12 AP titles from 1961 to 2020, and 11 in the coaches' poll. Notre Dame has eight AP titles and Oklahoma seven.

Who won the 2025 college football national championship? Indiana, which beat Miami (Fla.) 27-21 in the CFP final on Jan. 19, 2026, to finish 16-0. It was the program's first AP title.

When was the last split national championship? In 2003, when USC won the AP title and LSU the BCS title game and the coaches' poll. There have been 11 splits since 1950 and none in the playoff era.

How many national championships does Alabama have? Twelve in the AP poll, 11 in the coaches' poll and six BCS or CFP titles. The school claims 18, adding its 1973 coaches' title and five seasons from 1925 to 1941 chosen by other selectors.

How this was built: every season from 1936 to 2025 under three standards kept apart. The AP champion is the No. 1 of the final AP poll in College Poll Archive, checked against the NCAA's FBS record book in every season; the coaches' champion, from 1950, is the No. 1 of UPI's final coaches' poll through 1990 and USA Today's since, from the record book, with its consensus list as a cross-check; the BCS (1998-2013) and CFP (2014-2025) champions are the title-game winners, from the record book and the CFP. Records are full seasons as the record book gives them. Conferences are those of the title season in the AP archive, and decades follow the season. 2026: the AP poll of Oct. 18 and the CFP's schedule, as of Oct. 21, 2026. See also our methodology.