re: Bama: Do you have 15 NC trophies? Do players receive retroactive rings?

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Who were these teams that were ranked above Alabama and Washington?

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A lot of teams. Look, I'm not flaming but the research and hard evidence shows pretty clearly bama was not considered a top ten team and Washington was maybe a #5 at best.

Additionally, bama was the 8th team the Rose Bowl tried to get and not even the first southern team.

The rose bowl win was nowhere near as significant as bama fans like to say. There were many more important wins by southern teams well before the 1925 Rose Bowl which was not anywhere close to a matchup of top teams.

Tulane was offered an invite (even though they had a tie and didn't have as good of a season). Their coach turned it down because he thought his team was too small to beat Washington.

The only team that I can find that looked better on paper was Dartmouth. They can claim it as well. I'm fine with split champions.

Clemson was more impressive in their bowl win though. The story of the 1926 rose bowl is sorta interesting and shows how much different the game was then as well.

Bama tried and succeeded to hurt the best player for Washington that was their entire offense, defense, and special teams. Dude was a one man show that scored all their points, led their defense, and was even their special teams. Bama assigned 2-3 guys to hit him when he was on defense every play. Eventually they knocked him out for one quarter and were able to score 20 points while he was out with bruised ribs. When he returned in the 4th, Washington took over again. With the dude in the game, Washington outscored bama 19-0, with him out bama scored 20 straight points. It is sorta crazy, but I guess that is the way it was back then.

ETA: Washington went went up 12-0 in the first half (missed two extra points) with their superman player scoring both tds and running wild. He went out in the 3rd and bama scored 20 straight. He came back in the 4th and Washington quickly scored a TD, got the ball back and the dude broke loose but was caught on a touchdown saving tackle on the final play. Really is an interesting game to read about.

Yeah it was. Dude was apparently an unstoppable force and Wade was able to take him out.

Grown man football. It was considered strategy back then.

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But seriously, the team was celebrated as national champions at every train stop on the way back from California.

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To an extent yeah. Some of that is hyperbole, but yes they were celebrated. In the south though. No one really considered them actual national champs or even close really. Not even Bama themselves until decades later.

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Additionally, bama was the 8th team the Rose Bowl tried to get




wrong

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As stated, by 1925, the Big 10, Notre Dame, and most major Eastern teams would not play post-season games

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8-0 Dartmouth, 7-0-2 Colgate, and 5-1-1 Princeton turned down invitations, and 7-1 Michigan, 5-3 Illinois, and 5-2-1 Yale appear to have rebuffed inquiries as well, so the Rose Bowl committee looked Southward, but first to Alabama's Southern Conference co-champion 9-0-1 Tulane. Unlike Alabama, Tulane had already established national relevance by tying Missouri Valley champion Missouri (6-1-1) and by going up to Chicago and beating 5-3 Northwestern 18-7 (Northwestern gave 7-1 Michigan their only loss). But Tulane also turned down the Rose Bowl, citing concern over the students being out of class for the long trip out West and back. The Rose Bowl bid thus fell to Alabama

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Alabama's upset over Washington, on the strength of kicking one more extra point, was a great win for the South, but it was massively less impressive and important than Georgia Tech's 41-0 win over 9-2 Pennsylvania in 1917.

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Southern games that were more important than bama's 1926 RB win:

The rise of Southern football was nowhere near an overnight process. It was a long series of successes by different teams that built one upon the other, and the 1926 Rose Bowl was just one more of those. All of those Southern teams deserve recognition. So here is an extensive list of significant intersectional wins (and ties) for Southern teams prior to Alabama's first Rose Bowl victory (some of these may not seem significant, but were considered so at the time):

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1906: 8-1 Vanderbilt struck the first significant Southern blow in football history when they defeated 9-3 Carlisle 4-0 at home.

1907: 5-1-1 Vanderbilt tied 9-2-1 Navy 6-6 on the road, more impressive to Eastern writers because they saw it firsthand, and Navy wasn't "just an Indian school."

1910: 8-0-1 Vanderbilt tied 6-2-2 Yale 0-0 on the road, and Yale being considered the premiere program in college football at the time, this outcome was a far bigger deal than the Carlisle win or Navy tie.

1917: 9-0 Georgia Tech beat 9-2 Penn 41-0 at home. The South's first legitimate mythical national champion, and not retroactively selected-- universally hailed as the nation's champion that year.

1917: 6-2-1 Auburn tied 8-0-1 Ohio State 0-0 at home, spoiling their perfect season.

1919: 9-0 Centre won at 8-2 West Virginia 14-6. This game made Centre a national sensation.

1921: 10-1 Centre won at 7-2-1 Harvard 6-0, long considered the greatest upset in college football history. Several writers from outside the South felt that Centre was the best team in the country in 1921.

1922: 8-0-1 Vanderbilt tied 6-0-1 Michigan 0-0 in the first game played in Vanderbilt's stadium. Vandy (and much of the South) celebrated as though it were a win.

1922: 6-3-1 Alabama won at 6-3 Penn 9-7.

1924: 6-3-1 Vanderbilt won at 3-3-2 Minnesota 16-0.

1924: 5-3-1 Georgia Tech defeated 6-3-1 Penn State 15-13.

1925: 9-0-1 Tulane tied 6-1-1 Missouri 6-6 at home. Missouri beat Nebraska for the Missouri Valley Conference championship.

1925: 6-2-1 Georgia Tech defeated 4-4-1 Penn State 16-7 in New York City.

1925: 9-0-1 Tulane defeated 5-3 Northwestern 18-7 in Chicago.

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The True Legacy of the 1926 Rose Bowl
The truth is that the 1926 Rose Bowl was mostly the Game that Changed Alabama.

tiptop25.com

Some guy's blog.

If you're gonna appeal to authority, make sure it has some authority. Why didn't you link it? Just kidding, I know why.

Here is a more modern day analogy of bama's 1925 title claim:

1. There is no BCS to match #1 and #2.

2. An non-AQ team with no significant football history or big wins in its history goes undefeated against an extremely weak schedule in which no team they face is even ranked and they even struggle in some games against terrible teams. They win their bowl game against a pretty good team (maybe #5 at best) after the team's Heisman trophy winning qb and Lombardy and Butkus winning middle linebacker and Lou Groza award winning kicker all get hurt.

3. Notre Dame, Oklahoma, and FSU all also finish undefeated.

Non-AQ team claims natty.