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Bragging Rites: College Football's Disputed Titles
Who is the best team in College Football? Sports fans have argued this question for decades. Over 40 times in the last 90 years more than one team has claimed to be national champion, and for a quarter century the effort to create a definitive playoff has only further fueled controversy. This book looks at the history and evolution of the selections of college football champions. It looks at every controversial split title – 43 of them – and lays out evidence to let the fans decide. This combination of history, logic, statistical analysis and nearly 140 illustrations incorporate the author’s fandom to create an entertaining look into “the greatest bar argument” in the United States. Along the way, it crafts a rich descriptive history of the players, coaches and innovators who created college football.
274 pages, Paperback
Published May 24, 2025
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September 21, 2025
I should start with two caveats: first, I know Keith personally, so I'm favorably inclined towards this work to begin with, and second, I might be one of very few people who shares Keith's perspective of being both a big college football fan and an academic.
With that out of the way, I found this book to be an enjoyable, quick read. Obviously the focus is on the history of disputed national championships of big-time college football, which we can divide across a few broad eras: the pre-poll era; the emergence of the AP poll; competing polls and the rise of the bowls era; the Bowl Alliance/BCS era, and the four-team and expanded playoff era.
Sprinkled liberally throughout are Keith's observations on the evolution of the game and photos and images of iconic venues and figures in the history of the sport. He also lays out the cases for the disputed titles and typically weighs in on the basis of strength-of-schedule metrics.
To my mind the biggest disputes arise in the 50s through the mid-70s, when bowl games were becoming more prevalent but not universally entered by top teams and the AP (until the late 60s) and Coaches polls lacked a post-bowl vote.
I found myself agreeing a lot with Keith's observations, perhaps not surprisingly, particularly those about the evolution of the BCS ranking formula over the years as machinations to handicap the computer rankings component to conform with the human rankings became an annual ritual.
There are a few areas where I think the book could have been strengthened. Perhaps this is a pet peeve of mine, and maybe reflects a difference in journalistic standards between "serious news" and sports coverage, but I'd have liked to have seen some thought about the contradiction between the role of the media in covering sports and its role in effectively setting the agenda through the AP and FWAA polls, especially given the blow-up between the AP and BCS midway through that era that led to the Harris Interactive poll being introduced as a replacement.
Also. the discussion of the impact of the conferences' bowl tie-ins on the Bowl Alliance and BCS era might have been a bit more elaborate. Due to the book's timing, the final chapter on the College Football Playoff feels a bit incomplete and, at points, has some shifts in tense that are confusing. The shift to straight seeding for 2025 may reduce some of the potential issues Keith identifies, but it may introduce others. Perhaps a bit more discussion by Keith of how modern computer rankings and metrics, like SPI+ and FPI, and efforts to project human rankings like RankingsRightNow, might influence both the CFP and bar arguments about the sport going forward, would also have been interesting.
Overall though I can recommend the book as a worthwhile read to any college football fan with an interest in the history of the sport.
With that out of the way, I found this book to be an enjoyable, quick read. Obviously the focus is on the history of disputed national championships of big-time college football, which we can divide across a few broad eras: the pre-poll era; the emergence of the AP poll; competing polls and the rise of the bowls era; the Bowl Alliance/BCS era, and the four-team and expanded playoff era.
Sprinkled liberally throughout are Keith's observations on the evolution of the game and photos and images of iconic venues and figures in the history of the sport. He also lays out the cases for the disputed titles and typically weighs in on the basis of strength-of-schedule metrics.
To my mind the biggest disputes arise in the 50s through the mid-70s, when bowl games were becoming more prevalent but not universally entered by top teams and the AP (until the late 60s) and Coaches polls lacked a post-bowl vote.
I found myself agreeing a lot with Keith's observations, perhaps not surprisingly, particularly those about the evolution of the BCS ranking formula over the years as machinations to handicap the computer rankings component to conform with the human rankings became an annual ritual.
There are a few areas where I think the book could have been strengthened. Perhaps this is a pet peeve of mine, and maybe reflects a difference in journalistic standards between "serious news" and sports coverage, but I'd have liked to have seen some thought about the contradiction between the role of the media in covering sports and its role in effectively setting the agenda through the AP and FWAA polls, especially given the blow-up between the AP and BCS midway through that era that led to the Harris Interactive poll being introduced as a replacement.
Also. the discussion of the impact of the conferences' bowl tie-ins on the Bowl Alliance and BCS era might have been a bit more elaborate. Due to the book's timing, the final chapter on the College Football Playoff feels a bit incomplete and, at points, has some shifts in tense that are confusing. The shift to straight seeding for 2025 may reduce some of the potential issues Keith identifies, but it may introduce others. Perhaps a bit more discussion by Keith of how modern computer rankings and metrics, like SPI+ and FPI, and efforts to project human rankings like RankingsRightNow, might influence both the CFP and bar arguments about the sport going forward, would also have been interesting.
Overall though I can recommend the book as a worthwhile read to any college football fan with an interest in the history of the sport.
Displaying 1 of 1 review