Five teams remain undefeated that won a national championship after the I-A split but before the BCS era. Which has the best shot at winning it all in 2017?
It is always hard to break down where to delineate eras in college football history. But there are often certain milestones that mark key shifts in the sport. One that we talked about last week was the formation of the Bowl Coalition in 1992, which begat the Bowl Alliance in 1995 and in turn the Bowl Championship Series beginning in 1998.
But there is also a time marker that might be even more significant in how the game has developed over the modern era. That point is 1978, the first season when Division I was divided into I-A and I-AA subdivisions.
The year before, in 1977, 14 different conferences operated at the Division I level. Leagues like the SWAC, Ivy League, and Missouri Valley Conference functioned fundamentally on the same level as the Big 8, SEC, Big Ten, and Pac-8. There were also three dozen independents at a time when it was still perfectly viable to function as a lone operator without a conference.
That would all quickly change over the course of the next two decades. Once the bloated Division I was partitioned into levels starting in 1978, the gulf between haves and have-nots widened further.