1908 National Championship...Why doesn't LSU officially claim this?

You should call LSU. I bet they don't know about it

You might want to read LINK

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We aren't Bama.

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This.

There's easily a few more we could claim.

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We aren't Bama.

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Honestly...that's not an answer.

BAMA (and they are certainly not the only ones, though they are the worst offenders) use those dubious titles to help recruit and promote their brand. Do you think if some 16 or 17 year old recruit will bother to differentiate between which titles are legit from 1938 and which are not? All they see is this:



That's certainly not the ONLY thing bringing in blue chippers, but let's not pretend that those past (and often dubious) titles are not part of the legend.

LSU can continue to pretend to be above such things, or they can claim it and move on. In a league where Ole Miss has a sign up for the 2003 SECW Co-Champs, no one would blink at LSU claiming a title from 1908.

I'm not too hot and bothered about it one way or the other...but I'm certainly not going to act like it would be some bitch move by LSU considering the company we keep.

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Because, it's pretty much not even arguable that they were paying Doc Fenton as essentially a pro football player and nothing more.

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The article states that most of the teams back then did the same thing...

Bama claims that 1941 title, which is just absolutely ludicrous. They were something like 6-4-1 that year.

ETA: I stand corrected. They were 9-2. But not SEC champs, and only #20 in the final AP poll.

I'm glad that this is being discussed among LSU fans.

It seems that the further away from the Bear Bryant years we have come, the harder it is for younger LSU fans to wrap their collective mind around the idea that there is anything distinctive about the history of Alabama football.

The reason for that may be that these younger LSU fans genuinely seem to remember as far back as Nick Saban at LSU -- and no further. They know that the great Billy Cannon led LSU to a storied national championship in 1958, and that he won the Heisman Trophy in 1959 with what might well have been the greatest run in college football history.

LSU has had two "perfect seasons" in its history -- that one in 1958 and this one under discussion in 1908. Actually, you could count other undefeated and untied seasons in LSU history -- 1895 (3-0-0), 1896 (6-0-0), 1898 (1-0-0), and 1905 (3-0-0). LSU, at the turn of the 20th century, had very creditable football teams.

One problem with any historical evaluation of Southern college football is that it grew up down in this part of the country away from the Press in the Northeast, Midwest, and even the Northwest, where teams such as Stanford and Washington were getting "ink" by about 1920. That "Northern Press," to my way of thinking, was still overrating Big Ten teams and Notre Dame as late as the 1960's and 1970's.

My college roommate at Samford University in 1960 was Wayne Atcheson, who is the man who came up with the five pre-Bryant national championships at Alabama, when Wayne was SID for Ray Perkins at the University of Alabama. This was about 1983. Wayne is now the librarian and curator for the Billy Graham Library and Museum, at Asheville, North Carolina. You are not going to find a more mild-mannered, well-meaning person in the country, in my opinion. He grew up near Clanton, Alabama as the son of a humble Baptist preacher. He was the sponsor-director of the University of Alabama chapter of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes for several years, even after he had left the SID position.

My impression of what Wayne did comes probably from the general impression we had in the sixties and seventies that the Northern Press had long since jumped on the Knute Rockne-Frank Leahy-Ara Parseghian bandwagon at Notre Dame. Curiously, Ohio State was a latecomer to this party by way of Woody Hayes' achievements in the fifties and sixties. Apparently Michigan had always been a juggernaut, and Michigan State under Duffy Daughtery also came into prominence during the fifties and sixties.

Sportswriter Beano Cook made the statement before his death a few years ago that the Notre Dame SID in the fifties, whose name escapes me, was one of the best ever at his job, and that this SID was the reason that Paul Hornung won the Heisman Trophy in 1956 as the Notre Dame quarterback on a 2-8 team. It is the only time, I believe, that the Heisman has ever been won by a player on a team with a losing record. Runners-up to Hornung that year included Jim Brown and Tennessee's Johnny Majors.

Wayne Atcheson chose as his five pre-Bryant national championship teams at Alabama the 1925 (10-0-0), 1926 (9-0-1), 1930 (10-0-0), 1934 (10-0-0), and 1941 (9-2-0) teams. The 1925 team beat Washington 20-19 in the Rose Bowl; the 1926 team, undefeated in the regular season, tied Stanford 7-7 in the Rose Bowl; the 1930 team beat Washington State 24-0 in the Rose Bowl; the 1934 team, with Bear Bryant as "the other end," beat Stanford 29-13 in the Rose Bowl; and the 1941 team beat Texas A&M 29-21 in the Cotton Bowl.

Marty Mule of New Orleans has written a large, well-done history of the Sugar Bowl, as well as a smaller book, a history of Tulane football. I think that if you were to read Peter Finney's history of LSU football, along with Mule's discussions of Tulane football, you would come to the conclusion that Tulane football, in spite of such legendary LSU players as Steve Van Buren and Y. A. Tittle, was probably at least as prominent as LSU football before the 1950's.

The great Tulane football coach in the 1920's (and maybe even '30s) was Clark Shaughnessy. If you were to look into the career of Shaughnessy, you would find that he was much like the great 49ers head coach Bill Walsh. Both men were brainy innovators and both coached at Stanford.

Here is the important point -- Shaughnessy's 1925 Tulane team was offered the chance to play Washington in the Rose Bowl -- but turned the chance down. The Rose Bowl committee then offered the chance to another Southern team -- the University of Alabama, who under Coach Wallace Wade proceeded to make history by being the first team from the South ever to play in the Rose Bowl. That Alabama team apparently surprised just about everyone by edging heavily favored Washington 20-19.

I challenge anyone on this Board -- if you are truly interested in this matter of Alabama football and its claims to national championships, then simply Google "Alabama wins the 1926 Rose Bowl." You will find that this was more than just another ball game. The major theme of historians of this event has been that, as far as many Southerners were concerned, it was as if the South had gotten back against the North for the first time since the Civil War.

Also please check out the list of early Rose Bowls. You will find, I think, that Alabama appeared in more Rose Bowls (during the '20s, '30s, and '40s) than all other Southern teams combined. Unfortunately I have to mention this -- LSU was never invited to the Rose Bowl.

The great LSU tradition is of Billy Cannon running for glory against Ole Miss in 1959 -- after LSU had won the National Championship in 1958 with an undefeated, untied season. I know I will sound like "Pug" in Herman Wouk's THE WINDS OF WAR, (or indeed Forrest Gump), but I met Billy Cannon in Baton Rouge three months before he ran The Run. I am all too aware of what I consider THE GREAT LSU FOOTBALL TRADITION. That Run, in my humble opinion, is the greatest event in the history of Southern football. It should be commemorated, also in my opinion, by a statue outside Tiger Stadium.

Wayne Atcheson wrote what he did in about 1983 because he felt that Notre Dame had been showered with glory by the Northern Press, while Alabama's achievements, highly valued by many Southerners, had been largely disregarded and forgotten by that same Northern Press. While that Press had spoken freely over the years about the great Rockne and Leahy teams as being national champions during the '20s, '30s, and '40s, remembrance of the great Rose Bowl teams of Alabama's during those same decades seemingly had gone by the wayside.

A corollary to this story is that an upstart newcomer, Robert Neyland of Tennessee, beat Wallace Wade's 1928 Alabama team 15-13. Coming on the heels of Alabama's appearances in the 1926 and 1927 Rose Bowls, this was an upset that "put Tennessee football on the map." It was not until the 1970's that Bear Bryant may have somewhat reduced the challenge of history provided by General Neyland's storied career at Tennessee, by beating Tennessee eleven straight times, 1971-1981.

Oh look, it's THIS thread again.

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Do you think if some 16 or 17 year old recruit will bother to differentiate between which titles are legit from 1938 and which are not? All they see is this:

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So what you are saying is, LSU should claim it to reel in better recruits? Because if LSU claimed another national title someone's perception of LSU would be drastically changed? "Gee I thought LSU was ok but NOW they have another national title, that's where I want to play."- said no recruit ever