Top All-Time NCAA College Football National Championship Conference

Which is the top all-time NCAA college football national championship conference?

Listed below and to the right is the order of conferences with the number of college football national championships in parentheses.

Big 12 – (16)

SEC -- (15)

Big Ten -- (13)

ACC -- (9)

Pac-10 -- (4)

Big East -- (3)

But, here's some caveats:

The above list only includes college football championships from 1936 to present. Importantly, it only includes one champion each year (official NCAA selector). As you know, college football does not have a playoff system as most other college sports do. So, traditionally, champions were crowned by various coaches and sports writers polls. More often then not, various polls named more than one team as the champion.

For the purposes of this page, our list of football national championships by conference only counted the College Football National Champion as named by the Associated Press (AP) (1936 - 1997); and from 1998 on – the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) Champ.

So, for instance, the list above only includes 6 Alabama football national championships. Of course, as discussed at Best All-Time NCAA College Football Program, depending on which polls you count, Alabama could be credited with up to 12 college football national championships.

One more caveat -- we included National Championships won by schools that are now part of a particular conference. So it based on current affiliation, not historical affiliation. This favors the Big Ten because we are counting (for them) 2 NC's by Penn State ('82 & '86) that of course Penn State won before they joined the Big Ten.

For more comprehensive information check out this pdf: College Football National Champions (prepared by Tex Noel of 1st-n-Goal). It has a listing of every college football team that ever won a National Championship from 1936 on -- and includes official selectors as well as total selectors -- and much, much more.

You can read more of Tex' stats at SEC Football Statistics and even contact him via a form on that page.

So, picking the Best or Top All-Time NCAA College Football Championship Conference is really more of an art than a science. It is quite subjective. See SEC vs Big Ten Debate for more about the subjectivity of this debate.

Also, the list above shows the Big 12 with most all-time football championships. This is largely due to the great teams Oklahoma and Nebraska had over the years. Of course, most of those championships came before the Big 12 was even formed. Nebraska and Oklahoma were both in the Big 8 Conference. The Big 12 has only been in existence for 12 years.

The Southeastern (SEC), by contrast, began in 1932, so each of its 14 championships was earned by a team that was in the SEC at the time, and still is.

Also, if you look at more recent college football history – the SEC leads the pack. Since 1990, the SEC has more NCAA football championships than any other conference with six.

Since the BCS system began in 1998, the SEC leads with 4 BCS Championships. And, they've won it each of the past 2 years and 3 of the past 5 years. You can read more about most of those games at Biggest All-Time SEC Football Victory.

The ACC and Big 12 both have 2 BCS Championships. The Pac-10 and Big Ten both have 1.

OK, all of those caveats add up to one thing:

THE SEC IS REALLY THE TOP ALL-TIME NCAA COLLEGE FOOTBALL NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP CONFERENCE.

If you want to check out the stats by decade, check out the page submitted by a visitor at Most College Football National Championships By Decade.

To read about why we need to ditch the bowl system and go to a playoff system, check out College Football Playoff.

To read more about the comparison of the football conferences, check out

Big Ten vs SEC Football

SEC vs ACC Football

SEC vs Big 12 Football

SEC vs Pac-10 Football

SEC vs. Big East Football

SEC vs. Ivy League Football

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