Alabama Football: National Championship Club Top 10 CFB Programs
By Ronald Evans
Alabama Football: Top Ten National Championship Club
No. 1 – Alabama Crimson Tide
15 Alabama Football National Championships: 1925; 1926; 1930; 1961; 1964; 1965; 1973; 1978; 1979; 1992; 2009; 2011; 2012; 2015; 2017
As a reminder, the NCAA does not recognize 1934 or 1941 as National Championships for the Crimson Tide.
Little need be added to the Tide’s National Championship history. Alabama football fans know it well. In the ten decades going back to the 1920s, excluding the 1941 title, the Alabama Crimson Tide won National Championships in seven of them. No other program has come close to such a feat.
The 1925, 1926 and 1930 National Championships under Wallace Wade changed the program forever. Historians argue the 1926 Rose Bowl win over Washington had the greatest impact of any college football game – ever. It changed the Alabama football program, but also changed the entire University of Alabama, the state of Alabama and much of what was then known as the Deep South.
What Paul ‘Bear’ Bryant and Nick Saban have achieved is also unparalleled. Again, counting back to the 1919 season, no school can claim a pair of coaches equal to Bryant and Saban. The closest would be the eight Championships won by Rockne and Leahy at Notre Dame. As every Alabama football fan knows, Nick and the Bear are at 11 – and counting.
Next. Three reasons Nick Saban will retire being the Tide coach. dark
Eleven dominant programs are not many when counting back to 1919. Not all 11 are currently legitimate National Championship contenders. Somewhere between three and five will not be given much of a chance to win the 2020 Championship. More noteworthy is six-to-eight of the 11 can again define a season goal as being National Champion.