re: Off-season topic: revisiting the ‘77 season

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Notre Dame - finished 1st in the AP and UPI. Defeated Texas 38-10 in the Cotton Bowl and jumped from 5 to 1 after the bowls. Only loss was to Ole Miss in Jackson.

Alabama - finished 2 in both polls. Crushed Ohio State 35-6 in the Sugar. Only loss was to 9-3 Nebraska in Lincoln.

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It should also be noted that Alabama beat Ole Miss that same year.

There were bumper stickers that read, "Just ask Ole Miss who the champs are!"

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Alabama could claim well over 20 national championships if they used the standards other schools have adopted in recent years with the bullshite excuse of "Alabama"

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Over 30 actually.

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dchog
It doesn't matter what you and the polls believe who the champion was that year.

Arkansas proved it on the field that year by going unbeaten. Arkansas claimed the title and should have done so in 77. Nothing can be said or done to change that.

Naming a champion before the bowls are played was stupid and backwards. Just another reason why the playoffs should have happened decades ago.

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You are just awarding yourself national championships because "meh feelings".

Bowl games were considered exhibition games and did not count. Some teams wouldn't even play in them at all. The teams went into those games AFTER already having been awarded the national championship a month prior to playing in them. That is the reality of it. It's not like they waited until the bowls were over to say - oh well we only counted until the end of the season, they awarded long before the bowl games were even played.

It was actually pretty common for teams to win national championships and then lose in the bowl game. It only became a problem in the 60's because of Alabama and the political atmosphere at the time.

Which is why they are mythical national champions. You can have 10 unbeaten teams claiming national titles in the same year and the same with 10 one loss teams. No one is going to change the opinion of these programs that claim these titles and no reason for anyone to be mad about them claiming those titles. You might as well argue with a rock.

You get the polls involved and they pick the champions but the problem is you got politics and bias involved that favor some programs over others. It was a broken system and the BCS wasn't much better. People complained more and the powers that resisted for decades finally decided on a playoff. They didn't want that because that took power away from them and let it be done on the field the way it should be.

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Originally the bowl games weren't treated seriously - they, at the time, were treated more like exhibition matches. Coaches had to change their approach to the games when they started to count. Players could no longer just chill on the beach in the days leading up to the game.

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So you’re saying Bear Bryant told his team to just lay around until game time so they could get the shite beat out of them? I call bullshite on that.


Even you dudes can’t seriously believe that. You boys are hilarious…

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So you’re saying Bear Bryant told his team to just lay around until game time so they could get the shite beat out of them? I call bullshite on that.


Even you dudes can’t seriously believe that. You boys are hilarious…

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You don't seem to understand how things happened. You and others falsely seem to believe the National Championship was awarded after the bowl games.

It wasn't.

The National Championship and other awards happened before the bowl games, nearly a month before. Those players walked into those games knowing that the game made no difference, they were already national champions. The final AP/Coaches poll having been released weeks prior.

You can ignore that if you want, but you are wrong to do so. Imagine if Michigan played in some invitational game sometime in February, and lost. And now 60 years later some dork who doesn't understand shite starts claiming it's proof Michigan wasn't the NC and this other team should be.

That's what you do.

Bowl games exhibition but any real competitor competes 1000%

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Ive always wondered why pig never claimed it....lots of teams out there have claimed with much much less of a resume.

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Personally I was so shocked and happy about winning that game it never really occurred to me about being national champions. That type of deal never happens for us deserved or not.