Georgia football goes into the 2018 season with National Championship goals. The team is trying to snap a 38-year National Championship drought.
Let’s get right to the question. How many National Championships has Georgia football won? That’s a serious question. It’s one that gets asked a lot. And there are a lot more answers to that question than you might think.
Three answers to be exact. Georgia either has two, five or six National Championships. Which one of these answers is correct? Well, they’re all correct. But how can that be. How can a team not be certain how many National Championships they have. Actually many programs have this issue. It’s the biggest reason why we have a playoff now. The old system, not the BCS or Bowl Alliance or Bowl Coalition, the system before that was broken.
Before the bowl coalition was created in 1992, the championship was just the no. 1 team at the end of the season. Bowl games weren’t relied on to put no. 1 and no. 2 against each other. If the no. 1 team played the no. 5 team, they just had to win and hope the rankings didn’t give someone else more first place votes.
And the worth thing about this system was the amount of polls, rankings and points systems used to select champions and create top-25’s. Even worst than that, the NCAA recognizes most of them. In fact, the official NCAA rule book lists 42 different major National Championship selectors that have existed at some point. Very rarely did every ranking agree on who the champion was. Meaning, in the NCAA Record Book, there are multiple National Champions for each year.
So, to tie this back to Georgia football. How many National Championships do the Bulldogs have? Two, five or six? And why is every answer valid? I’ll explain each answer separately.