Ad Disclosure
Best Champions of The BCS/College Football Playoff Playoff Era
Last Updated:
Twenty-five teams have gone undefeated since the system that has evolved into the current College Football Playoff came into existence in 1998. Seventeen were crowned national champions.
That should at least narrow the list of candidates for the 10 best teams of the BCS/Playoff era.
Right?
In the immortal words of ESPN’s Lee Corso, not so fast, my friend.
Running the table for an entire season takes elite talent and great coaching. But it also involves a little luck along the way, especially now that the Playoff has expanded to 12 teams. That’s why a loss – or in at least one case, 2, doesn’t disqualify a national championship team from appearing in these rankings.
Top 10 BCS/Playoff Champions
These are the 10 best national championship teams since the BCS/College Football Playoff era began in 1998.
10. 2024 Ohio State
The Buckeyes lost 2 games during the regular season, but they were never ranked lower than No. 4 until heading into the final week of the regular season. And they wouldn’t have qualified for the Playoff had it not been expanded to 12 teams that season. But Ryan Day’s team proved its worth in the postseason by rolling through 4 of the nation’s best teams on the way to the national championship. With quarterback Will Howard, the running back tandem of Quinshon Judkins and TreVeyon Henderson, freshman receiving sensation Jeremiah Smith and a stout defense leading the way, Ohio State finally showed its full potential by routing Tennessee and top-seeded Oregon in the first 2 rounds, then outslugging Texas and Notre Dame – also by double-digit margins – to earn its title.
9. 2008 Florida
Sometimes it takes a loss to bring out the best in a championship team. That was the case with the 2008 Gators. After rolling out to a 17-7 halftime lead on Ole Miss, Urban Meyer’s team took its foot off the accelerator and suffered a 31-30 loss to the 22-point underdog Rebels. After the game, Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow delivered what has become known as The Promise. “A lot of good will come out of this,” Tebow told reporters. “You have never seen any player in the entire country play as hard as I will play the rest of this season, and you’ll never see someone push the rest of the team as hard as I will push everybody the rest of this season.” Tebow proved true to his word. Florida beat its final 8 regular-season opponents by a 414-97 margin, then beat No. 1 Alabama 31-20 in the SEC Championship Game before rolling past Oklahoma to win its second BCS championship in 3 years.
8. 2020 Alabama
There are a lot of asterisks attached to the COVID-altered 2020 season. Players and teams opted out because of the pandemic. Fans had limited and sometimes no access to the games. Conferences played condensed schedules. And teams were limited in how and how often they could practice. But amid all that chaos, Nick Saban’s Crimson Tide shined through as unquestionably the best team in the land. Mac Jones threw for 4,500 yards and 41 touchdowns, receiver DeVonta Smith won the Heisman Trophy for a team that averaged 48.5 points per game and led the nation with a +29 point scoring differential. Alabama capped its 13-0 season with a 31-14 rout of Notre Dame in the Playoff semifinal and an equally lopsided 52-24 beatdown of Ohio State in the final.
7. 2013 Florida State
The 2013 Seminoles are best remembered for their explosive offense, which led the nation with 94 touchdowns behind the passing of Heisman Trophy winner Jameis Winston. But Jimbo Fisher’s team was just as dominant on defense, holding its opponents to only 12.1 points per game. FSU’s toughest test came in the Fiesta Bowl against Auburn. Showing that they were resilient as well as talented, the Seminoles drove 80 yards on 7 plays in the final 79 seconds for the go-ahead touchdown that clinched their championship and an undefeated 14-0 season. Nine players from the team were selected for All-America teams, including consensus picks Winston, cornerback Lamarcus Joyner and center Bryan Stork, and 4 were selected in the first round of the NFL Draft.
6. 2015 Alabama
This was the best of Nick Saban’s 6 national championship teams at Alabama. A big reason for that was the relentless running of Heisman Trophy winner Derrick Henry, arguably the best player of the Saban era in Tuscaloosa. Henry rushed for an SEC-record 2,219 yards and 28 touchdowns in leading the Crimson Tide to a 14-1 record, with the only blemish coming in an early season upset to Ole Miss. Despite playing the most difficult schedule of any team in the BCS/Playoff era – including 14 teams that finished with a winning record and 13 that went to bowl games – Alabama ran the table the rest of the way. The Crimson Tide shut out Michigan State 38-0 in the Playoff semifinal, then outlasted Deshaun Watson and Clemson 45-40 in an epic championship game victory behind a 158-yard, 3-touchdown performance from Henry and 2 receiving scores from tight end OJ Howard.
5. 2001 Miami
The Hurricanes entered 2001 with a chip on their shoulder after getting shut out of the BCS championship game by a Florida State team they beat head-to-head the season before. The beneficiary of that added motivation – along with a number of key starters, including quarterback Ken Dorsey – was first-year coach Larry Coker, who inherited the program after predecessor Butch Davis left for the Cleveland Browns. Loaded with 17 future first-round NFL Draft picks and record 38 players who went on to play in the NFL, Miami went 12-0, crushing the competition by an average of 33 points per game. Its methodical run to the school’s fifth national championship ended at the Rose Bowl with a better-late-than-never 37-14 domination of Nebraska.
4. 2018 Clemson
Say what you want about the quality of competition in the ACC. This Clemson team, led by future No. 1 overall NFL Draft pick Trevor Lawrence, record-setting runner Travis Etienne and a star-studded defensive line manned by future pros Clelin Ferrell, Christian Wilkins and Dexter Lawrence, proved its worth resoundingly against no less than Alabama. After waltzing through their conference schedule, beating Pittsburgh 42-10 for the fourth of their 6 consecutive ACC titles and disposing of Notre Dame in the Playoff semifinals, Dabo Swinney’s Tigers handed Nick Saban the worst defeat of his tenure in Tuscaloosa by beating the defending champion Crimson Tide 44-16 in the national championship game to become the first modern champion to finish 15-0.
3. 2022 Georgia
The Bulldogs were an underdog when they beat Alabama for the national championship in 2021. A year later they were an absolute juggernaut in going 15-0 for their second straight title. They were the only team in college football to finish in the top 5 nationally in scoring offense (41.1 ppg) and scoring defense (14.3 ppg). They held 7 opponents to their season low in points and led the nation in scoring differential at +402 (616-214). They hung 50 on LSU in the SEC Championship Game to win, but that was nothing compared to what they did to TCU to win the national title. After quarterback Stetson Bennett led the largest fourth quarter comeback to beat Ohio State 42-41 in the Playoff semifinals, Georgia administered a 65-7 humiliation on the Horned Frogs that was the largest margin of victory in any bowl game. That is, until the Bulldogs carved up a skeleton Florida State crew 63-3 in the Orange Bowl the following January.
2. 2005 Texas
Mack Brown’s Longhorns rolled through the 2005 season by topping 50 points 7 times, including a 70-3 humiliation of Colorado in the Big 12 Championship Game on the way to what was then a single-season NCAA record of 652 points. But it was that season’s 2 closest games that defined Texas’ season and established it as one of the great teams of the BCS/Playoff era. In Week 2, it went to Columbus and beat Ohio State 25-22 at the Horseshoe. Nearly 4 months later, the Longhorns rallied for a 41-38 win against Southern Cal at the Rose Bowl that didn’t just clinch their undefeated season and fourth national championship. It also served as vindication for quarterback Vince Young, whose MVP performance and game-winning touchdown run helped make up for his Heisman Trophy snub in favor of the Trojans’ Reggie Bush.
1. 2019 LSU
The Tigers weren’t just the best team of the BCS/Playoff era. An argument can be made that the 2019 team was perhaps the best in college football history. Simply put, LSU was loaded. Its quarterback Joe Burrow threw 60 touchdown passes and won the Heisman Trophy by the widest margin in history. Running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire ran for 1,400 yards, top receivers Ja’Marr Chase and Justin Jefferson went on to become NFL Pro Bowlers, its offensive line won the Joe Moore Award as the nation’s best and safety Grant Delpit won the Thorpe Award as the top defensive back in the college game. The Tigers outscored their opponents 726-328, knocked off 4 top-10 opponents. But they were at their most dominant best in the Playoff. Ed Orgeron’s team dismantled Oklahoma 62-28 in the Peach Bowl, then beat defending champion Clemson 42-25 in the title game to become only the second team in the modern era to go 15-0 in a season.
Award-winning columnist Brett Friedlander has covered the ACC and college basketball since the 1980s.
