5 best college football teams to never win BCS or CFP championship
By Zach Bigalke
As we enter the 20th season of a national championship game at the FBS level, let’s look back at the five best college football teams that came close.
When the Bowl Championship Series started in 1998, it launched a new era for college football. There has been plenty of drama and questionable selections over the years, to be sure. Not every championship game got the showdown it deserved. Sometimes it felt as though the wrong team was selected in a given year.
After 16 years, the BCS was sidelined in favor of the College Football Playoff. As a plus-one model, the CFP provides double the access. That does not necessarily mean that the system reduces the questions about methodology or the final results. Penn State can attest to that, as can TCU and Baylor a few years back.
But as we enter the 20th season of a fairly unified and definitive national championship system at the FBS level, it is worth looking back at those teams that came oh-so-close to contending for a national championship. Whether due to conference affiliation, an inopportune loss at the worst time, or falling flat in a title game, some teams have simply been snakebitten when it comes to getting over the final hurdle.
Click through to see the five best teams of the BCS and CFP eras who failed to win the biggest prize over the past two decades.