Turner College Economist's 2009 Study Explains Auburn University's Decision Earlier this Week to Claim Additional National Championships in College Football

Many in the local community have been discussing Auburn University's decision earlier this week to officially claim several college football national championships that were awarded by various "championship selectors" but previously unclaimed by the institution. Among these are the 1910, 1913 and 1914 championships won under the tutelage of a young Irishman named Mike Donahue. These three teams combined to win 22 games, losing only once and tying once. The next claim is of the 1958 championship, following Shug Jordan's leadership of the team to nine wins and one tie. When combined with the 10-0 championship team from the previous season, these Tigers combined for 19 wins and one tie. The next two championships claimed - 1983 and 1993 - fall under the coaching tenures of the late Pat Dye and Terry Bowden. Dye's 1983 team went 11-1, losing only to Texas and claiming The New York Times' computer-based championship. Bowden's 1993 finished 11-0 and was the only undefeated team that year. Finally, the Tigers now claim the 2004 national title after going 13-0 under the leadership of now-U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville. The accompanying photo above, taken on Tuesday afternoon, depicts the changes to Auburn's Jordan-Hare Stadium in response to that morning's announcement from Auburn Athletics Director John Cohen that the institution now claims nine national championships (1910, 1913, 1914, 1957, 1958, 1983, 1993, 2004 and 2010).

     What Auburn did on Tuesday is nothing new. The University of Alabama did something similar in the mid-1980s, while the University of Georgia joined in on the act in the late 1980s. These two institutions, in addition to Georgia Tech, could make an argument even today for claiming additional titles from earlier periods of college football history. All of this is possible due to the lack of a playoff system in college football before the 1998 season. From that season onward, college football has utilized a playoff involving two (the BCS system, 1998-2013), four (2014-2023) or 12 teams (2024-present) to determine its champion, making it difficult for institutions to claim titles without winning the playoff (although the University of Central Florida did so after going undefeated during the 2017 season, but missing the four team playoff). Prior to the 1998 season, champions were selected by sportswriters (AP Poll), coaches (UPI and other Polls), computers (Sagarin, etc.), and various sports organizations (e.g., College Football Foundation). This meant that many seasons concluded with multiple teams claiming the national championship.

     What does any of this have to do with the Turner College? Well, Turner College economist Frank Mixon published a 2009 study in Applied Economics with Jim Swofford of the University of South Alabama and Trellis Green of the University of Southern Mississippi explaining the utility of these types of claims. This gist of the study is that a college football championship exhibits collective consumption benefits, meaning that enjoyment of a championship by one fan doesn't diminish the potential for enjoyment by any other fan. A useful example is that of a swimming pool, which can generally be enjoyed by multiple swimmers at the same time, provided that no two swimmers insist upon using the same spot in the pool. Mixon and his colleagues used the 2003 college football season to illustrate the point. That year the LSU Tigers completed a one-loss season (13-1) by beating the Oklahoma Sooners in the Sugar Bowl to claim the 2003 BCS Championship. However, the USC Trojans defeated the Michigan Wolverine's in that season's Rose Bowl to finish 12-1 and were awarded a national championship by the sportswriters' AP poll. In that case, there is enough geographical separation between the two institutions, as indicated by the map above, that the bulk of the two fanbases don't intersect, and therefore they have little, if any, sense how much the other is enjoying its 2003 national championship. That is, both fanbases are, even today, enjoying their own 2003 national championship at the same time.