Mythical national championship

A mythical national championship (sometimes abbreviated MNC) is national championship recognition that is not explicitly competitive. This phrase has often been invoked in reference to American college football, because the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) does not sponsor a playoff-style tournament or recognize official national champions for the Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS). The relevant recognition before 1998 came from various entities, including coach polls and media ballots, which each voted to recognize their own national champions, and is similar to the newspaper decision used in early boxing matches. Starting in 1998, national champion recognition was determined from the Bowl Championship Series until it was replaced by the College Football Playoff in 2014; neither system has ever been sanctioned by the NCAA to determine the national champion.

If there are any Big Ten teams that shoot for a national championship, they're damn fools...You play to win the Big Ten championship, and if you win it and go to the Rose Bowl and win it, then you've had a great season. If they choose to vote you number one, then you're the national champion. But a national champion is a mythical national champion, and I think you guys ought to know that. It's mythical.

— Bo Schembechler of Michigan, July 1989

"Mythical national champion" is a term that has been used since at least 1920 for a championship won by an NCAA Division I football team, especially for titles won before the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) system began in 1998. Before the BCS, polls in which coaches and/or sportswriters voted, such as the AP, UPI, and USA Today polls, awarded championships. This led to seasons in which two or more teams could claim to have won the national championship. Due to this, the NCAA does not designate a national champion for the sport in its record book.

Since the 1930s, each top team has traditionally played a single postseason bowl game. The process of selecting a national champion during this time was complicated by the fact that the champions of major conferences were tied to specific bowls (for example, the Big 8 champion was tied to the Orange Bowl), and the top two teams in the nation often played in different bowls. A few bowls over the years featured a #1 vs. #2 matchup; one example was the 1987 Fiesta Bowl, played January 2 following the 1986 season.

Two attempts to annually crown a champion on the field were the Bowl Coalition (1992–94) and Bowl Alliance (1995–97). However, their effort to host a national championship was hampered by the lack of participation of the Pac-10 and Big Ten champions, who instead opted to play in the Rose Bowl.

The BCS was an improvement on the Bowl Coalition and Bowl Alliance because it included the Rose Bowl and the champions of what were then the nation's six most powerful conferences. It attempted to eliminate uncertainty by ranking college teams and inviting the top two teams at the end of the regular season to play in a championship game. These teams were determined by the BCS ranking formula, which itself used a combination of human voter polls and computer rankings. The process of selecting the two best teams for the BCS championship game had nonetheless resulted in controversy, which reached a head in 2003 when the AP poll refused to vote the BCS champions (LSU) as their national champions. Instead, the AP voted USC as national champions for the 2003 season. This resulted in disputes between which team was the real champion, and as a result, the 2003 BCS Champion is not unanimous. As a result of this controversy, the AP removed itself from the BCS formula in 2004. Furthermore, because of AP Poll policies, should a team under a postseason ban finish first in the AP Poll, the AP will recognise such team as the AP's national champion. The AP will also not recognize further penalties, which resulted in a vacated national championship in 2004 by most authorities, but the AP still recognizes USC (which was stripped by the NCAA of wins and the BCS committee of its championship) despite the Reggie Bush penalties.

Since the 2014 season, the College Football Playoff—in association with Division I FBS collegiate conferences and independent schools, along with six bowl games—has been played among the top four teams (as selected by a thirteen-member committee) to play two semifinal bowl games followed by a CFP National Championship Game between the semifinal winners. However, the panel has been criticized for failing to recognize champions of conferences outside the five major conferences for participation in the CFP or the New Year's Six games.