Auburn football to recognize 7 additional national championships, giving Tigers nine

USA Today

a day ago

Though it's often overshadowed by hated in-state rival Alabama — a literal elephant in the room — Auburn football has a proud history of its own, with two national championships to its name.
Thanks to a recent tweak, that number is about to get a lot bigger.
The Tigers are adding seven national championships to their tally, with the university making the move to 'honor the accomplishments of our deserving student-athletes, coaches, and teams.'
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Auburn will now recognize titles from the 1910, 1913, 1914, 1958, 1983, 1993 and 2004 seasons, in addition to the 1957 and 2010 championships that had already been recognized in the program's history. That philosophical change would give Auburn nine national championships.
Previously, the Tigers only acknowledged championships in which they finished a season atop the Associated Press poll (or, in the case of the 2010 team, winning the BCS championship game). In three other seasons — 1910, 1913 and 1983 — they were selected as the No. 1 team in the country by NCAA-recognized independent selectors.
"For too long, Auburn has chosen a humble approach to our program's storied history – choosing to recognize only Associated Press national championships," Auburn athletic director John Cohen said in a statement to the Montgomery Advertiser, part of the USA TODAY Network. "Starting this fall, we have made the decision to honor the accomplishments of our deserving student-athletes, coaches, and teams from Auburn's proud history. Our visible national championship recognitions now align with the well-established standard used by the NCAA's official record book and our peers across the nation."
Auburn's 1914 team finished 8-0-1, with a tie against rival Georgia the only blemish on its resume. That year, Army, Illinois and Texas finished atop the various polls and rankings. Its 1958 squad, one year removed from one of its two previously recognized titles, went 9-0-1. LSU, at 11-0, was the No. 1 team in every poll and ranking other than the Football Writers Association of America, which gave that spot to an 8-1-1 Iowa team.
In 1993, the Tigers went undefeated under first-year head coach Terry Bowden, but was ineligible to play in a bowl or the SEC championship game due to NCAA sanctions. They finished that season No. 4 in the AP poll. In 2004, they again went undefeated, this time with a roster headlined by future NFL first-round draft picks Cadillac Williams, Ronnie Brown and Jason Campbell, but were one of three undefeated major-conference teams at the end of the regular season and finished behind No. 1 USC and No. 2 Oklahoma in the BCS standings. After a Sugar Bowl win against Virginia Tech, they finished No. 2 in the final Coaches Poll.
While notable, Auburn's decision isn't entirely unusual in the strange, complicated history of college football.
Before a national title game was instituted ahead of the 1998 season, college football's national champions were determined by a series of independent polls and rankings, some of which were more prominent and widely recognized than others. If one of those lists had a particular program at the top, the school had the option of acknowledging it.
Cohen isn't the first Auburn administrator to wrestle with the title count question. In 2014, then-Tigers athletic director Jay Jacobs said he was weighing the possibility of recognizing additional championships, believing it was 'about appropriately recognizing those teams that were rewarded by a credible poll.'