re: Does Alabama count 1973 as a NC?

The polls used to award the national champoinship before bowl games. There are lots of teams that won the national championship via a major poll at the end of the regular season only to lose their bowl game.

Bowl games were viewed largely as "exhibition" games for a long time. It was only around the 60's and 70's people began viewing them more as meaningful post-season games that should matter.

hell, the NCAA didn't even count bowl game stats until the 90's.

That was the system, if you think the system was retarded, fine. Over time people thought it was dumb too, so they changed it.