1970: 3 Champions, Zero Agreement

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Texas and Ohio State shared the NFF's pre-bowl MacArthur Bowl and Texas alone held the pre-bowl UPI title, but both lost their New Year's Day bowls, handing unbeaten Nebraska the post-bowl AP and FWAA championships.

The case for each side

Nebraska

11-0-1

Recognized byAPConsensusFWAARecognized· claimed by the program

11-0-1; beat LSU in the Orange Bowl to take the post-bowl AP poll (its first title of back-to-back consensus champions) and the FWAA vote.

Nebraska’s 1970 schedule

Texas

10-1

Recognized byNFFRecognizedUPIConsensus· claimed by the program

10-1; finished No. 1 in the pre-bowl UPI coaches' poll and shared the NFF's MacArthur Bowl with Ohio State, then lost the Cotton Bowl to Notre Dame.

Texas’s 1970 schedule

Ohio State

9-1

Recognized byNFFRecognized· claimed by the program

9-1, Big Ten champion; co-recipient of the 1970 NFF MacArthur Bowl (awarded before bowl games) alongside Texas, then lost the Rose Bowl to Stanford.

Ohio State’s 1970 schedule

No national title game was played after the 1970 season: before 1998 there was no mechanism to play one, which is why so many of these seasons were settled by vote instead.