(01-08-2018 05:16 PM)quo vadis Wrote: (01-08-2018 05:05 PM)CrazyPaco Wrote: (01-08-2018 03:09 PM)Kaplony Wrote: (01-08-2018 09:12 AM)EvilVodka Wrote: (01-08-2018 09:08 AM)quo vadis Wrote: Actually, there is something official about the CFP, as Aresco said the other day, the CFP is the process the 10 FBS conferences and ND contractually agreed to to select their national champion.
Also, you don't have to be undefeated to claim anything, you just made that up. If Troy claims a national title and wants to hold a parade, you couldn't stop them either.
NCAA championships are official
The BCS and "Playoff" are pretend TV championships
Better tell the NCAA they are "pretend"
http://www.ncaa.com/history/football/fbs
The NCAA doesn't name, denote, sanction, adjudicate, or officially recognize FBS (highest level) football national championships. It never has in its entire history and still does not. FBS level of play is, and always has been, outside of the NCAA's championship purview.
All the NCAA has done is list the selections of other entities (often termed "selectors" and meaning things like the AP, Coaches' poll, FWAA, CFRA, BCS, etc) in its records books or other websites. The website you linked isn't complete or official, nor contemporaneous.
I agree with this. The NCAA does not denote/sanction/formally recognize any FBS champions, ever.
That said, those who say that because the NCAA doesn't do this that these championships are all 'mythical' are mistaken. BCS and CFP titles are not mythical, they are the contractually-agreed on champions of all the member institutions, in the same way that the Super Bowl winner is the agreed-on champion of all the NFL franchises.
Whether one agrees or not about what the NCAA does or doesn't do in regards to football championships doesn't matter. It is simply fact.
There is also no such thing as a "mythical" national championship. It is a misemployment of the term that came to colloquially mean a non-governing body awarded championship (e.g. non-NCAA awarded). Simply, all FBS level championships have been named by third-party organizations or individuals that claim an expert knowledge of the sport. Those claims have later been adjudicated by various historians. Anyone is free to agree or disagree with the third-party selectors and/or the adjudicators and hold their own opinions on legitimacy of championships, but they aren't "mythical" (fictitious or made up) as they have been awarded by some recognized third-party selector(s).
However, a school claiming a championship that was never awarded by any recognized third-party selector could certainly be deemed a "mythical" championship as it is reflective of a more accurate definition of the term. Any school can make a claim to a championship in anything (unless their governing body forbids it, which isn't the case in FBS football), but such a school is far from a recognized selector or historical authority and certainly cannot claim any sort of fair adjudication. In essence, there are two things here: selections by third-parties and claims by the institutions themselves. There are certainly some selections that aren't recognized by the schools to which they were awarded, but it is awful hard (if not impossible) to justify a institutional claim to a championship without it being based on some third-party selector.
The CFP, and previously the BCS and Bowl Alliance, are simply selectors made up of committees that make picks, not unlike other historical major selectors. The major difference is that they are able to create on-the field matchups which their historical predecessors could not. But their selections are no less a result of their own preferred methodologies than were the selections of their predecessors also based on their own preferred methodologies. Another difference from their predecessors is that their championship is much more ubiquitously recognized. In a way, the historical progression of the historian-organizational-mathematical selectors, polls, Bowl Alliance, BCS, and CFP could be thought of as march towards unifying championship belts in boxing.
In theory, the NCAA is no different in naming champions in the sports that it sponsors because it chooses the format and methodology of naming a champion. But all of the participating member institutions agree to championship format ahead of time, and the crowning of champions is ubiquitously recognized by its membership institutions as a condition of enjoying that membership. Add to that, no one has seriously challenged the NCAA's authority to name a national champion in its sponsored sports, since say, the late 1940s when it was challenged by the NIT, or the early 1980s by the AIAW.
In the end, the perceived legitimacy of a national championship is simply a condition of its popular or contemporaneous recognition. The danger is as one gets farther removed from the history of this process, as with a lot of history, the bias of recentism typically creeps in.