What if the college football championship was passed from team to team the way boxing's heavyweight championship is passed on - by a belt that can only be taken from the champ in a head-to-head match-up?
...
Clemson then took the belt from Alabama on 1/7/2017 (thus uniting it with the "other" national championship) and held it all offseason.
The following season the Tigers rolled along until
Syracuse took it from them on 10/13/17. The very next week,
Miami took it from Syracuse, but the Hurricanes couldn't hold on to it long enough to face Clemson in the ACC CG, instead losing it to
Pitt on 11/24/17. Since Pitt was not bowl-eligible that year, they held it all offseason (so it was not involved in the national championship that year).
In the second week of the 2018 season,
Penn State took the belt from Pitt on 9/8/18. The Nittany Lions then lost it to Ohio State on 9/29/18. The Buckeyes lost it to
Purdue on 10/20/18, and
Michigan State took it from the Boilermakers the following week. Two weeks later
Ohio State won it back on 11/10/18, and they still hold it to this day (thus, it was not involved in the 2018-19 national championship either)...
https://accfootballrx.blogspot.com/2019/...pdate.html
Sometimes one upset can have a major impact on the trajectory of the belt, so I have an offseason exercise for you all:
1) starting with the next team you believe will defeat Ohio State, trace the ownership of the CFB belt through the 2019 season. If someone gets it right (the final owner of the belt after the season ends), perhaps we can reward that person with some rep points or something...?