Auburn Has Decided To Claim 4 Previously Unrecognized National Championships, Including 2004 When the Tigers Notably Did Not Play in the National Championship Game

On3 — It’s about time.

Auburn football, finally, will claim nine deserving and legitimate college football national championships, AuburnSports confirmed on Tuesday.

Previously, there have been two AP national titles recognized inside Jordan-Hare Stadium (1957 and 2010) and three more national titles quietly noted in the football media guide (1913, 1983 and 1993).

Four more national titles will now be recognized.

Auburn’s official national titles will now be: 1910 (new), 1913, 1914 (new), 1957, 1958 (new), 1983, 1993, 2004 (new) and 2010.

1910: Maxwell Ratings (Loren Maxwell), College Football Rankings (Kyle Matschke) 1913: Billingsley MOV (Margin of Victory) and NCAA Football Record Book 1914: James Howell’s Power Ratings System 1957: AP and NCAA Football Record Book 1958: Montgomery Full Season Championship (David Montgomery) 1983: Billingsley, FACT, Football Research, Sagarin, NY Times and NCAA Football Record Book 1993: National Championship Foundation and NCAA Football Record Book 2004: Several, including Darryl Perry and GBE College Football Ratings 2010: AP, BCS and NCAA Football Record Book

With just 10 days until Auburn opens the season with a huge non-conference game at Baylor, everyone on The Plains is laser-focused on the task at hand in what will be a critical season for Hugh Freeze. Just kidding, they're making up national championships to claim.

Some of this has always been a practice amongst college football programs, but I don't really remember a school making a big show of it, particularly a week before the season kicks off. Auburn's new national titles include the 1914 season based on James Howell's Power Ratings System, during which the Tigers finished 8-0-1 and did not even finish in first place of the Southern Intercollegiate Athletic Association standings — Tennessee went 9-0-0. Army, Illinois and Texas all also went undefeated and claim national titles. In 1958, Auburn again finished second in the SEC to undefeated and real national champion LSU, but will now claim a title that year after finishing 9-0-1 with a tie against Georgia Tech thanks to something called the Montgomery Full Season Championship.

But whatever, schools do this all the time and if you want to say you won a national champioship in 1914,go for it. The truly egregious one is 2004. Auburn did finish the season undefeated, winning the SEC Championship Game and Sugar Bowl, but we had a system in place by this time to determine a true national champion. It just so happens that the Tigers went undefeated in the same season as USC and Oklahoma and narrowly missed out on the BCS National Championship Game. Sorry, them's the breaks.

Claiming a national title in 2004 is some UCF shit. If you want your program to be looked at as one that engages in that sort of behavior, then by all means, have at it. It just seems like using Darryl Perry and the GBE College Football Ratings to claim a championship that I can go watch on YouTube right now is a bit silly, but if that makes y'all happy, I am glad.

Winning national championships in years you didn't even have to play in the title game seems like a pretty sweet gig. More teams should try that.