Bama's claim of 12 national titles debunked by Auburn fan

Alabama's claim of 12 national championships has become a punch line around the college football world. If you check the records, you'll only find six (impressive enough). But to Bama fans, it's simply not enough - they claim 12.
One of our long time readers and contributors to this site, War Eagle Atlanta has taken exception to this claim.
He's done an incredible job debunking the 12 national title myth that permiates Bama Nation.
Below are his findings (Be sure to click on the page jump. It's a lengthy article, but worth the time)...
As Auburn fans, you've had an Alabama fan throw in your face the claim of them having 12 national championships more times than you care to count. But have you really ever thought about if what they're telling you is true?
Even better, do you think they've ever thought about the validity of a claim that high? Or do you just assume they've drunk from the big keg of Crimson Kool-aid? It's so automatic, and so parroted by so many of their fans, it has to be true, right? Well, today we're going to answer that very question, and what you read here may surprise you.
First thing's first. We're going to have to start with a little background information before we start analyzing each of Alabama's claimed NCs. This background will take you to virtually the beginning of college football. Bear with me! (no pun intended)
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP IN DIVISION 1-A COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Yes, that is true. The NCAA does not officially sanction a national championship in football's highest classification, like it does for every other team sport and all other classes of football. You should know this. That's why we're always arguing for a playoff to decide the NC rather than letting the polls decide it. But wait, you argue, someone is crowned the NC each year and every year since. True enough, but it is done by the individual poll AND NOT THE NCAA.
The two current big polls, the AP and the Coach's poll sanction their own champion, sometimes independently. Their polls are so widely acclaimed and accepted, everyone just assumes that they are the authority.
SO HOW DID THESE POLLS COME TO BE AND WHY ARE THERE SO MANY NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP SELECTORS OUT THERE?
Here's your brief history of the polls and the national championship. College football dates back until 1869, and it took root in the south in the 1890s. For many decades since it's inception, there was no such thing as a national college football champion. With the birth of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association, the first athletic conference in the nation, the highest honor for a team to strive was a conference championship and perhaps wins over their biggest rivals.
It was more or less a regional thing. By the early 1930s, sufficient interest in college football was beginning to build so that people started wondering who the best team in the nation might be. Thus, the modern news polls were born. The AP poll debuted in 1934, took 1935 off, then ran again in 1936 and every year since. The UP poll debuted in 1935, then didn't poll again until 1950. In 1958, it became the UPI poll, which most of us remember, and it ran until 1996. By 1997, it had been supplanted by the new USA Today/ESPN poll, otherwise known as the coach's poll, which still runs today.
So, to repeat myself again, prior to the AP and UPI poll debuts, there was no such thing as a recognized national championship. NOTE: The Dickinson system was created in 1926 and was actually the first selector of football national champions, but they fizzled out by 1940, so I do not recognize their limited results as being credible).
Once these polls had been out for a while and started to gain a little credibility, some folks started to theorize about who might have been the best teams in the seasons prior--going all the way back to the 1860s. "Gee, we played 60 years before and never had a national champion, it might be fun to look back and see who might have been." So that the news polls wouldn't have all the fun, a multitude of other 'selectors' slowly arose, some using mathematical models in an attempt to statistically calculate who the strongest team of a given year might be.
These many selectors then made their respective picks, not always agreeing, since there were upwards of 30 or more selectors in the business after a few years. Did any of these selectors have any more credibility than the news polls? No, but it was sure evident that there was now more than one game in town.
With the influx of so many 'national championships' coming from this cadre of independent selectors, it's only natural that teams who were being awarded a NCs might actually decide to accept these newfound accolades. But not so fast, my friend! These titles were never decided on the field.
The teams playing in that season were not aware that there was any national title on the line. There was no national polling system at that time ranking each team week by week, using the dynamics of that particular season. They were all chosen years or decades AFTER THE FACT!
Therefore, since a significant national polling system wasn't created until 1934, any claims of a national championship prior to that is absolutely NOT CREDIBLE by any standard used today or since the dawn of the news polls. These NCs are known as BACK-DATED titles, a term you'll need to remember because you'll see a few of them on Alabama's title resume.
These back-dated titles are claimed by some self-serving schools because some minor selector awarded the team an insignificant championship using unreliable and statistically un-credible criteria well after the fact. Some of these selectors even bypassed using statistics at all and simply voted popularly for teams years later.
Suffice it to say that since these selectors chose sometimes decades after the fact, that their results are simply not worthy of any merit. Any team that claims a back-dated title is just trying to pad the old resume. But who's going to question it 50 or 80 years after the fact, other than War Eagle Atlanta?
Most of these early selectors have faded into history, although some still survive, and new ones are born every year. As long as there is subjective ambiguity in Division 1-A's football champion, these selectors will attempt to carve out their little piece of significance.
Today we basically only recognize the AP and coach's polls as being legitimate. All the others run by the wayside. But remember this: just because you haven't heard of a particular NC selector, it doesn't mean that some team somewhere isn't claiming the results as part of their football lore.
The problem with all these selectors is that in years past, it wasn't always clear who the most credible selectors were. It seems very defined today, but back then the AP and UPI hadn't yet attained the stature that they did in later years, and sometimes teams were declared NCs as a result of the preponderance of minor selectors choosing them.