You know how in boxing, if you beat the champion, you become the new champion?
Several years ago, I thought about how interesting it would be if college football had a championship like that: if you beat the champion, you become the champion. I even tried to research historical scores of college football games to figure out who might be considered the first champion, and then who beat them, etc. But I couldn’t find the data online.
As it turns out, I was not the only one with this idea. A few years ago, some people did the research, going back to the very first college football game in 1869, in which Rutgers beat Princeton. Rutgers was thus the first national champion. Princeton won the rematch, taking the title. And they have traced that title, referred to as the College Football Belt Championship, to the present day.
Sometimes that championship coincides with other national championships, as it did in 2021 with Alabama winning the College Football Playoff while holding the Belt championship. But a nice thing about the Belt championship is that it can be passed around more often than just once per year, and so there are more chances for teams to win it. There are 98 teams who have held the championship at least once.
In the past year, the championship has changed hands 4 times:
1. 10/9/2021 – Texas A&M beats Alabama
2. 11/13/2021 – Ole Miss beats Texas A&M
3. 1/2/2022 – Baylor beats Ole Miss
4. 9/11/2022 (because the game ended after midnight) – BYU beats Baylor
This is the first time since 1997 that the Belt championship has been held by a school outside the Power 5/automatic qualifying conferences. And that was also BYU, who held the title from 10/19/1996-9/6/1997. BYU also held the title 9/30/1995-10/14/1995. (BYU did not hold the title during its poll-based national championship year of 1984.)
You can see the history of the Belt championship on this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1s8aWwQ3TVcI9uK9FqQj9w9S6q0m6gi9pl5ho6D3Dft4/edit