Talking with cohorts about BG back in the day being a "Small"school national champion , whatever that means.... was UT always D1? MAC always D1? Maybe we can get some clarity.

NCAA went to three divisions in 1973. Don’t know how it was divided before that. BG won in 1959, IIRC. We were ranked with the Oklahoma’s and USCs during the streak so we were considered “big school” back in the 60s.

The way I remember it, back in the day college football had two divisions, University Division (big school conferences) and us small folk (College Division). Bowling Green was undefeated in 1959 and was named the mythical College Division National Champion that year.

We were always big school even if we were not in a big conference. When we had All-Americans, they were big school, not college division. The MAC teacher's colleges (BG,Ball St,EMU,NIU,Kent,CMU) played college division football.

Interesting, I thought too Mel Long was an All American and was on a Bob Hope special ..... But we didn't play out of conference games with "University Schools"? Say Northwestern....

Aaron Hopkins was NCAA champion, not “small college” champion. I found a timeline of NCAA events but none of them, apart from the 1973 division of schools, spoke to this.