10-0 in the regular season, No. 1 in the final AP and UPI polls (both taken before bowl games that year); then lost the Orange Bowl to Texas but kept the AP/UPI titles since neither repolled afterward.
Alabama’s 1964 schedule1964: 3 Champions, Zero Agreement
SPLITMULTIPLECollege football's most famous three-way split: Alabama's pre-bowl AP/UPI title survived its Orange Bowl loss, unbeaten Arkansas took the post-bowl FWAA vote, and late-charging Notre Dame earned the NFF's nod.
The case for each side
11-0, the only major-college team to finish unbeaten and untied; beat Nebraska in the Cotton Bowl and won the FWAA's post-bowl Grantland Rice Award vote (four of five first-place votes; Alabama received none).
Arkansas’s 1964 schedule
Recognized byNFFRecognized
9-1, lost only its final game to USC; did not play in a bowl (Ara Parseghian-era policy); named national champion by the National Football Foundation.
Notre Dame’s 1964 scheduleNo national title game was played after the 1964 season: before 1998 there was no mechanism to play one, which is why so many of these seasons were settled by vote instead.