Dubious national championship claims have been part of college football for decades, most recently turning 2018 into endless 2017 Playoff fallout debate.

It makes sense that Alabama’s athletics director and some Tide players have clapped back at the Knights in public, but it’s also ironic that UCF’s self-declared championship means questioning one of Bama’s fairly won title claims ...

... because the Tide famously have some outright chicanery on their list of claimed titles.

Like, way sillier and harder to defend than UCF’s undefeated season.

Most of Bama’s title claims are perfectly valid! A couple (1978, 1973) are debatable at best, and there’s actually one the Tide should start claiming (1966).

But then there’s 1941, perhaps the most hilarious championship claim in all of sports.

In a season with four undefeated teams before bowl games (when the final AP Poll came out at the time) and three afterward, the Tide got shut out by both Mississippi State and Vanderbilt.

They finished third in the SEC and ranked No. 20 in the final AP Poll. The bowl win over Texas A&M was pretty nice, but wouldn’t have moved Bama into the final top 10 or anything.

No one thought about this team again until around 1983, when the athletic department’s information director went back and claimed a bunch of old titles, basing 1941’s off an old formula by statistician Deke Houlgate, who’d died in 1959.

The Houlgate System — don’t worry if you’d never heard of it before today — is one of many obscure rankings recognized by the NCAA as a title “selector,” which doesn’t mean the Houlgate (or any other system) was empowered to award official titles, just that the NCAA felt it was about as valid as anything else going on in a sport with no actual championship.

Lots of teams have gone back and claimed old titles, most of them probably inspired by the Tide.

Kentucky, Minnesota, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, and USC are a few who’ve treated themselves to retroactive crowns. Many of those are actually defensible, the “this thing in the NCAA book says we’re No. 1” argument applies to UCF as well, and most of Bama’s revisionist histories are fine.

But nobody else has claimed anything quite as egregious as 1941.

And just because one selector named a team No. 1 doesn’t mean common sense should go out the window. Many schools have teams that were named No. 1 by one oddball computer or another, but choose to apply some ration and shame instead of running wild.

So let’s say we don’t care about the Houlgate System all that much.

Let’s also say a team only has to finish No. 20 in the AP Poll to eventually crown itself the champ. Here’s a bunch of teams who should start printing T-shirts.

Oh, they’d also have to find somebody who’ll say, “You were actually the best team that year,” but it’s possible to find at least one person who believes literally anything, so that should be easy.

(Below this list, I’ll preemptively field questions from a select portion of Alabama fans.)

2017: 9-5 Stanford

2016: 9-4 Miami

2015: 10-3 Oklahoma State

2014: 9-4 USC

2013: 9-4 Notre Dame

2012: 9-4 Oregon State

2011: 12-2 Southern Miss

2010: 10-4 Nebraska (who said Bo Pelini never accomplished anything!)

2009: 9-4 Ole Miss

2008: 9-4 Iowa

2007: 9-4 Illinois

2006: 10-3 Boston College

2005: 9-3 Texas Tech

2004: 8-4 Ohio State

2003: 10-3 Minnesota

2002: 9-5 Colorado

2001: 8-4 Michigan

2000: 8-4 Georgia

1999: 8-4 Georgia Tech

1998: 9-3 Miami

1997: 9-4 Texas A&M

1996: 8-4 Michigan

1995: 8-3 Miami

1994: 8-4 Arizona

1993: 9-2-1 Kansas State

1992: 11-2 Hawaii

1991: 8-3-1 Colorado

1990: 8-4-1 USC

1989: 8-4 Texas A&M (the Aggies might actually claim all of these)

1988: 8-3-1 Indiana

1987: 7-4-1 Arizona State

1986: 9-2-1 Virginia Tech

1985: 9-2-1 LSU

1984: 8-2-2 Virginia

1983: 8-3 East Carolina

1982: 8-4 Maryland

1981: 7-4-1 Oklahoma

1980: 8-4 $MU

1979: 8-4 Penn State

1978: 9-3 Maryland

1977: 9-2 BYU

1976: 9-2 Mississippi State (becoming the first-ever national champ to have forfeited a win over Cal Poly Pomona due to NCAA stuff)

1975: 9-3 West Virginia

1974: 7-3-2 Tennessee

1973: 8-4 Maryland (a No. 20 dynasty!) and 9-3 Tulane

1972: 7-4-1 Georgia Tech

1971: 6-4-1 USC

1970: 7-4-1 Oklahoma and 7-4 Ole Miss

1969: 8-3 Auburn

1968: 10-1 Ohio

1962 to 1967: The AP Poll only went to 10 teams. No champions.

1961: 7-3 Duke

1960: 7-2 Syracuse

1959: 6-4 Pitt

1958: 8-1 Rutgers!

1957: 9-0-1 VMI

1956: 7-2-1 Colorado

1955: 6-3 Army

1954: 7-2 Penn State

1953: 6-3 Michigan

1952: 5-3-2 Kentucky

1951: A tie at No. 19 meant no No. 20. No champion.

1950: 6-2 Tulane

1949: 8-2 Baylor and 7-3 Missouri

1948: 6-3 Wake Forest

1947: 7-2 Columbia

1946: 6-3 Indiana

1945: 8-1 Columbia

1944: 8-2-1 Second Air Force (yes, this is real)

1943: 6-2-1 Penn

1942: 5-4 Minnesota (the worst record of any national champion ever) and 6-1-1 Penn State

1941: Already claimed with authority

1940: For some reason, the AP stopped at 19 after doing 20 the week prior. No champion.

1939: 6-2 Michigan

1938: 7-2 Dartmouth

1937: 7-2-1 Duke

1936: 7-1 Marquette

13.8 billion BCE to 1935: No AP poll. No champions.

FAQ section

Q: Why are you so obsessed with us?

Every college football outlet posts about the Tide a lot. Your team is big, famous, successful, and interesting.

Q: Why are you so salty about our lies?

I know the rules of modern discourse mean every interaction must boil down to both sides claiming the other person is incredibly mad, with the winner being the side that convinces more neutral parties about the other side’s boiling rage, but I’m typing this on the back porch while listening to kids jumping on a trampoline. I’ve almost never felt less mad.

Q: Why did you pour so many hours into this list if you’re not obsessed with how bad our dumb number is?

That list took me about 20 minutes. I’ll probably double check it, after I finish handling these questions.

Q: Give it a rest, Georgia fan. Things that are old don’t matter.

I’m not a Georgia fan, and if it doesn’t matter, why do people rise to defend it every time it’s laughed at?

Q: It’s so old. Who cares?

It’s still in the media guide, recruiting materials, team merchandise, and on the field during each title game. Presumably, Bama would agree “17” is more marketable than “16.”

Q: Slow news day, loser?

It’s Friday afternoon, May 11.

Q: Why is the very sick lib media once again screeching hysterically into a diaper about Bama’s success? They hate us ‘cause they ain’t us.

I’m not The Media — I just made a blog post, is all — and here’s what my facial expression looked like for most of the last half hour: :|

It also looked like this, when I typed the parts about, like, VMI winning a title and couldn’t help but giggle: :D

At no point all day have my emotions risen above room temperature, even before I started this post.

Q: It was a different era. There was no title game, so there was no official champion. You can’t compare a two-loss team retroactively claiming a title 40 years later based on the ancient opinion of one person’s calculator to a team going undefeated.

We’ve found accord.