CFB national championships claimed by school

What constitutes a national title and how many has each school in the SEC really won?

That’s a difficult and nuanced question, mostly because until the creation of the BCS system, there wasn’t even an official national championship game. So polls determined which team won the title — sometimes before bowl games even kicked off.

RELATED: Auburn says no to claiming more national titles

Then there’s the question of which poll is the best as it relates to naming “national champions.” The most respected, the Associated Press Top 25, didn’t launch until 1934, and didn’t run continuously since ’36. That’s many decades after college football got going in earnest before the turn of the 20th century.

Recently, the Auburn Tigers considered claiming more disputed national championships, but decided against it. Many of Alabama’s 15 claimed titles are dubious at best. But even then, the Tide barely cover half the titles claimed by Princeton and Yale, the initial kings of college football.

The institution of the College Football Playoff won’t eliminate controversy, as we saw with the exclusion of TCU and Baylor from last season’s four-team tournament. But at least now there’s a system to determine a clear national champion that involves winning two post-season games against elite competition.

Here’s a look at the claimed national titles by college football program. Nine of the 14 SEC programs claim at least one national championship, and the exceptions are Mississippi State, Missouri, Texas A&M and Vanderbilt.

CLAIMED NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS