Football_Bat said:
You can blame Texas (once again
) in 1964 for making the bowls matter.
Alabama won the national championship in the regular season by going 10-0 and finishing No. 1 in both the AP and UPI polls. But the No. 5 Longhorns beat the Tide, 21-17, in the Orange Bowl (the Sugar Bowl had a "no repeat" rule in effect, so LSU went instead), and No. 2 Arkansas beat No. 6 Nebraska, 10-7, in the Cotton Bowl. Arkansas was awarded the Grantland Rice Trophy as national champions.
Needless to say, the final polls from 1965 on out were taken after the bowls.
Final poll was taken after bowls that season and then returned to pre-bowl polls in 1966 and 1967. Alabama was 11-0-0 and famously finished third in the 1966 poll behind Notre Dame and Michigan State, which played to a 10-10 tie in November.
Those teams remained 1-2 the following week while unbeaten Alabama stayed third. Notre Dame smashed USC the following week, but had a policy not to go to bowls. Michigan State also was barred from going to back-to-back Rose Bowls by Big Ten rules. So that's how they finished at the end of the regular season, and since there was no poll beyond the bowl games, Alabama had no recourse despite beating No. 6 Nebraska 34-7 in the Sugar Bowl.
Alabama ended as the only unbeaten, untied team in the nation, but had to settle for third despite recording six shutouts and outscoring the opposition 301-44. The reasons remain unclear, but some cite Alabama's weak schedule (sound familiar to Utah Boise State), which consisted entirely of teams from the South. This didn't seem to bother voters the year before when the Tide also had an all-Southern schedule, lost once and tied once and still won the national title. The Tide also had not beaten a ranked team (only 10 were ranked at the time) in 1966. Others said Alabama was being punished because Governor George Wallace's Alabama let racism and segregation run rampant. The Tide still did not have black players while Notre Dame and Michigan State did.
Alabama coach Paul "Bear" Bryant wanted to upgrade the schedule after that season and by the mid-1970s, the Crimson Tide was playing the likes of Nebraska, Notre Dame and USC among other schools outside of the South.
Since the end of the 1968 final polls have been taken after bowl games.
NCAA rules in 1966 only allowed eight national and five regional games to be broadcast - all season! Imagine that. More than that are shown on any Saturday now. The NCAA thought by showing too many games on TV, nobody would attend in person. That has sure killed interest in college football hasn't it.
Screwing teams that deserve to be No. 1 started long before the BCS and before TV contracts dominated the day.
College football has never had as much money as it has now. Conferences like the WAC are making much more than they ever made in the old days, but yes the pie is dominated by the Big Ten, SEC and other BCS conferences. There is not an equal split and may never be.
