Two Champs, One Era: The Unsettled Glory of 1990s College Football

The piece looks back at the 1990s when college football often crowned two national champions due to split polls (e.g., 1991 Miami vs. Washington; 1994 Penn State vs. Nebraska), highlighting how fans and players accepted multiple champions. It explains the move to the Bowl Championship Series in 1998 and, later, the College Football Playoff in 2014 in an attempt to crown a single champion, while noting that controversy persists into the modern era. The author suggests that the era’s dual championships had its own logic and appeal, rather than simply being “bad.”