
The Ohio State Buckeyes have a chance to give the Big Ten Conference back-to-back national championships for the first time in decades when they face the Notre Dame Fighting Irish in the College Football Playoff National Championship on Jan. 20 at Atlanta's Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
While the conference has its share of titles in its arsenal and is considered one of two premier conferences in college football, this would be a big win, especially with the Southeastern Conference having no representatives in the championship game for a second straight year.
Big Ten National Championship History
The Big Ten has 31 national football championships to its credit overall, the most of any conference. Those titles are distributed between six current member schools (Ohio State, Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan State and Iowa) and one former member (University of Chicago).
However, the Big Ten only has four national championships to its credit post-1970, with the Buckeyes and the Michigan Wolverines each claiming two. That has allowed other conferences to make up ground, particularly the SEC, which has won 21 of its 27 total championships during the same time frame.
The Wolverines won the title last year, capturing their second championship in the modern college football era. But one must go back even further to find the conference's last repeat national champions.
Michigan State won consecutive shared titles in the 1960s, sharing with Alabama and Notre Dame. The second of the back-to-back titles may be the Spartans' most notable of their five national championships as the defacto "national championship game" between Michigan State and the Fighting Irish infamously ended in a 10-10 tie.
When it comes to outright national championships, the Big Ten has not won consecutive titles since the early 1940s, when Minnesota won the 1940 and 1941 national championships during a run of five titles in seven years for the Golden Gophers.
Back-to-Back Champs
The SEC was the most recent conference to win back-to-back national titles with Georgia taking home the honor in 2022 and 2023. Alabama has also won consecutive titles by itself in the 2000s and combined with LSU for back-to-back titles for the SEC in 2019 and 2020. LSU also combined with Florida to win three in a row for the conference from 2006 to 2008.
The former Pac-12 Conference is the only other that can claim consecutive national championships in the modern era of college football (BCS and College Football Playoff eras). USC won the outright national championship in 2003 and a shared national championship in 2004.
Can the Buckeyes help the Big Ten reestablish itself among the coveted group?
"You've got to leave no doubt, that's it," Ohio State head coach Ryan Day told the media. "And whether it's a game or a season, we've got to finish this thing the right way. Whether you're talking about that foundation and building what you wanted to get done this season and finishing it the right way or leaving no doubt. I mean, all those things come into play, and it was all for this moment right here."
Ohio State's chance to leave no doubt on the field and finish the season on top of the college football world comes at 7:30 p.m. ET on Jan. 20.
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