CFP Championship: College football is among the oldest sporting traditions in the United States, dating back to the first contest in 1869 between the College of New Jersey (today known as Princeton) and Rutgers University.
That game looked a lot different from what we know as American football today.
Each team put 25 players out on the field, and players could not pick up or throw the ball, following rules from the London Football Association.
It looked a lot more like rugby or soccer, as players tried to hit or kick the ball across their opponents’ goal line. Rutgers ended up winning, 6-4, in front of a crowd of about 100.
CFP Championship: Is an American Cultural Event?
It wasn’t until seven years later that representatives from Yale, Columbia, Harvard and Princeton gathered to draw up a set of rules for the sport.
While the Alabama Crimson Tide have won 16 national championships, they’re still not the team with the most titles.
That honor goes to…Yale, as the Bulldogs still lead with 18. The school with the most all-time victories is the University of Michigan, who have won 1,011 games since 1879, the program’s first season.
The award for the best player in the game, decided by the New York Downtown Athletic Club, is the Heisman Trophy, first given out in 1935.
^A map of who America is rooting for in the National Championship game: pic.twitter.com/NY0bXUYsDk
— Notre Dame Fighting Irish (@Insidetheirish) January 11, 2025
Q&A CFP Championship: Is this game a national celebration?
How long has there even been a game to determine the national champion?
Before 1999, when the first BCS National Championship Game was held, the national championship was awarded on the basis of polling. The National Championship Foundation (NCF) selected the national champion from 1869 until 1882, when the Helms Athletic Foundation (HAF) Beginning in 1936, the Associated Press (AP) began issuing rankings of the top 20 teams in the nation, and their polling was used to determine the national championship each year.
The AP still issues preseason rankings and rankings during the season, but those no longer determine a national champion. That lasted until 1950, when the United Press International (UPI) also started holding a poll and determining a national champion.
Then, in 1954, the Football Writers’ Association of America (FWAA) got into the spirit. Later they were joined by the USA Today/CNN poll, and with all of these different polls – and a desire to settle a national championship on television, to make money, the idea of a BCS game was held.
Did the college football playoff games become a national celebration?
The movement of college football championships from polling to settlement on the field has made an occasion of the title game, whether the BCS Championship or the CFP Championship. The 2006 Rose Bowl between Texas and USC still has the highest rating (21.7) and viewership (35.6 million) of any of the title games.
Coming in second was the first national championship under the four-team College Football Playoff system, when Ohio State met Oregon in 2015 (18.6 rating, 34.1 million viewers). The game with the lowest rating (8.7) and audience (17.22 million viewers) was the demolition of TCU by Georgia in 2023, a 65-7 embarrassment. When the ratings have slumped, the games haven’t been close.
With the advent of a championship game, the BCS and CFP title showdowns became must-watch television in the United States – not to the degree of the NFL’s Super Bowl, which remains the world’s most-watched sporting event. However, the Monday night celebrations of a national championship in football have drawn huge ratings, and people come together across the country to watch the contest.
^CFP Championship: What influence does the game have on regional rivalries?
Regional Rivalry Highlights
One that has seen its profile grow thanks to the College Football Playoff developed between the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama. Georgia, coached by Kirby Smart, attempted to come out of the shadow of Smart’s mentor, Nick Saban.
In 2021, Alabama defeated Georgia in the SEC Championship, but Georgia still earned a berth in the College Football Playoff and defeated Michigan in their semifinal before moving on to beat Alabama in the title game, losing the SEC to the Tide but taking the national championship away from them.
For Georgia, that avenged the debacle in early 2018 when Georgia had a sizable lead on Alabama at halftime, only to see the Tide switch quarterbacks from Jalen Hurts to freshman Tua Tagovailoa at the intermission, come back and win the game in overtime, taking the national championship.
Clemson and Alabama
In the earlier days of the CFP, they developed a rivalry despite playing in different conferences. The Tigers and Crimson Tide traded victories in the national championship game in 2017 and 2019. However, in the years since then, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney’s reluctance to use the transfer portal to bring in key skill player talent, preferring to take the time to develop his own starters in-house, has proven detrimental to his desire to keep his program at a nationally competitive level. Clemson did win the ACC in 2024, but they did not advance to the quarterfinals of the new 12-team bracket of the College Football Playoff.
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Pac-12
There are some who blamed the College Football Playoff for the collapse of the conference. After all, teams who cannot get enough “quality” wins in football can end up with terrific records but still end up on the outside looking in. Despite the presence of Oregon and Washington in the Pac-12, the presence of a lot of unranked programs in the conference meant that the teams with visions of a playoff presence felt a need to run the table.
The Pac-12 also failed to secure a media contract that was competitive with the other four power conferences (the Big Ten, the Big 12, the SEC and the ACC), and so four schools (Washington, Oregon, UCLA and USC) joined the Big Ten, while Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado and Utah joined the Big 12. Stanford and Cal entered the ACC, leaving Washington State and Oregon State with an untenable “Pac-2” – even now, they are still looking for new alignments for their athletic programs.
Rivalries of the Past
What this means is that a lot of the older traditional rivalries have given way to national rivalries as teams focus on making the 12-team bracket at the end of the season. Conference championships are a part of that formula, but with each of the Power 4 conferences, except for the SEC for now, extending from coast to coast, the idea of regional powers emerging has become a thing of the past.
No thanks.
— Mr. Ohio (@MrOH1O) January 12, 2025
I want a traditional National Championship https://t.co/bhttuAizGd pic.twitter.com/v0E6xmREUS
Now we have matchups that include USC heading all the way to Rutgers for a football game, or Stanford heading from northern California all the way to upstate New York to take on the Syracuse Orange in an Atlantic Coast Conference matchup. In the final analysis, football (and, to some degree, basketball) media deals are shaping the landscape in college athletics, and it seems like it’s only a matter of time until football separates from the NCAA and becomes its own entity.
^Commercialization and the Media on the CFP Championship
NCAAF on the Radio
College football first aired on the radio on October 8, 1921, as Pittsburgh radio station KDKA-AM broadcast Pitt’s showdown with West Virginia University, a rivalry that still draws plenty of interest today. Fordham University and Waynesburg University played in the first televised game, on September 30, 1939. NBC broadcast the game on W2XBS.
If these programs do not seem like flagship teams, it’s important to remember that, until the 1980s, the idea of making a lot of money off broadcasting sports on television was completely foreign. When the American Basketball Association (ABA) folded in the 1970s, four teams headed to the NBA, while seven teams shut their doors. Instead of taking a cash buyout like the other six teams did, the owners of the Spirits of St. Louis opted for 4/7 of the television revenue of the each regular NBA franchise in perpetuity.
Initially perceived as a risky move, the deal ultimately generated over $800 million as television revenues soared. The NBA reached a settlement with the Silna family, owners of the Spirits, totaling $500 million, hailed by Forbes as the “greatest sports deal of all time.”
With media revenues boosting conference funds, teams in power conferences will thrive. This motivated SMU to accept no media revenue from the ACC’s first seven years, anticipating future visibility benefits for the program.
The NIL framework
The advent of the transfer portal and the NIL framework have also added to the commercialization of football. There was a time when players who wanted to transfer from one school to another would lose a year of eligibility.
However, the ease with which coaches moved from one school to another, along with the willingness of players to leave college early (or even forego college and start playing professionally) placed college football in jeopardy. The transfer portal now allows players to move largely without loss of eligibility.
If we look at players like Dillon Gabriel, who used the portal to move from UCF to Oklahoma to Oregon, where he appeared in a College Football Playoff quarterfinal in the final game of his college career, we see that players can gain visibility for themselves as they advance in the sport, making college football seem a lot like professional sports in terms of the portability of players.
How does it Works?
The NIL provisions in college football have heightened commercialization, transforming athletes from amateurs reliant solely on scholarships to individuals eligible for financial compensation. Historically, schools ignored this rule, with SMU in the 1970s and 1980s serving as a prominent example of such disregard.
The school received the NCAA’s one and only death penalty for the 1987 season and lost the right to play home games in 1988. The school opted out of football for 1988 as well and returned in 1989, but it was not until the 2024 season that the school made it back into the top ten rankings in college football.
What’s the Benefit for Players?
Now, though, the NIL program allows players to control the use of their image, instead of the schools. There is a mishmash of school policies and state laws, with no national oversight of the situation.
This has led to a lot of confusion and frustration – but it has also led to greater parity in the sport, as Alabama, Georgia and Clemson are nowhere near a national title for the first time in what seems like years.
College athletes can now hire professionals to help with their business dealings, marketing and legal issues. Schools have built collectives, funded by deep-pocketed donors, that provide stipends for players in multiple sports.
In other cases, boosters create the collectives for the schools; the degree to which each school regulates the NIL activities associated with its players varies widely.
CFP championship
In conclusion, the CFP championship game holds significant cultural weight, akin to a second Super Bowl. While its players are younger, some earn more than their future NFL peers. This abundance of money in football suggests it may represent the quintessential American sport.
^From 12 teams to two. Who will capture it all in the 2025 College Football Playoff #NationalChampionship?#CFBPlayoff 🏈🏆 pic.twitter.com/RdVhbvOOTf
— College Football Playoff (@CFBPlayoff) January 11, 2025
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