Most National Championships in College Football: Who Leads and Why It Is Complicated

"Who has the most national championships?" sounds simple, but college football has never had a single official national champion for most of its history. Titles have been awarded by polls, rating systems and selectors, and schools decide which of those they claim. The answer depends on which count you use.

Why there is no official count

• The NCAA does not award an official national championship in the top division of college football.
• Before polls, many selectors named champions retroactively, sometimes decades later.
• Since 1936 the AP poll, and later the Coaches Poll, have named champions; sometimes they disagreed.
• Since 1998 a title game has decided the champion: the BCS (1998–2013) and the College Football Playoff (from the 2014 season).

Most claimed national championships

School	Claimed titles
Princeton	28
Yale	27
Alabama	18
Michigan	12
Notre Dame	11

Princeton and Yale’s titles come mostly from the earliest decades of the sport, in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Most titles in the poll era (since 1936)

Counting AP and Coaches Poll champions since 1936, Alabama leads with 13, followed by Notre Dame with 8. Ohio State, Oklahoma and USC are next.

Recent champions

Season	Champion
2019	LSU
2020	Alabama
2021	Georgia
2022	Georgia
2023	Michigan
2024	Ohio State
2025	Indiana

Indiana completed its 2025 title season with an unbeaten 16–0 record.

How to read the numbers

• Claimed titles measure history and tradition, including the pre-poll era.
• Poll-era titles measure modern success.
• Playoff-era titles (since the 2014 season) are the clearest on-field measure.

Counts are as tallied on Wikipedia at the time of writing and can change as new seasons finish. For how overtime and the game work, see college football overtime and how football works.