How Many Football National Titles Can Notre Dame Claim?

In August of 2025 Auburn University garnered the attention of the college football world by claiming additional national titles for their football program. The school will now claim nine football championships while previously only celebrating one in 1957. Auburn is not alone, each school across the country takes different avenues to claim national championships. 

Notre Dame leans on what is considered consensus national football championships and has earned 11 total titles in 1924, 1929, 1930, 1943, 1946, 1947, 1949, 1966, 1973, 1977 and 1988. Even that definition of ‘consensus’ is strained, however, because the NCAA only recognizes ‘consensus’ titles since 1950 and since that season – 74 years – the ‘consensus’ national title has been shared 17 times. 

The Irish have been involved in three of those shared ‘consensus’ titles, 1964, 1966 and 1973. As you can see from the list in the previous paragraph, Notre Dame doesn’t even consider it won a title in 1964 but there were recognized selectors who did. 

The question gets asked many times. If Notre Dame claimed national titles like (insert a school name of your choice here) how many national titles would they have? The University is not taking any steps toward claiming more titles, but there is nothing wrong with attempting to try to answer that question that many Fighting Irish football fans ponder from time to time. 

A simple answer is that there are 11 other seasons in which a selector, recognized by the NCAA football record book, named Notre Dame the national champion. Those seasons are 1919, 1920, 1927, 1938, 1953, 1964, 1967, 1970, 1889, 1993 and 2012. There are arguments to be made that Notre Dame also could make a case for the 1941 and 1948 seasons. That is 13 more additional titles. 

Are any of them legitimate? Let’s dive in and work our way up from what would be perceived as the weakest arguments for a season to what might be something that, in the future, Notre Dame might consider adding to their national championship total. 

For the sake of the analysis moving forward, all rankings referred to will be the Associated Press, which began in 1936 and is the longest running and most consistent ranking system recognized in college football. 

Rating System:

🏆 - Selected by a recognized national championship outlet listed in the NCAA records book, but the data, or any argument for that season, does not meet legitimate national championship criteria. 

🏆🏆 - In the early years of college football when travel was an incredible challenge and Notre Dame had a hard time filling its schedule, it was difficult to claim a national championship but not impossible. For later dates, it is a special season that would most likely show up on title lists claimed by other programs. 

🏆🏆🏆 - A strong case that some day should be considered to add to the official list. 

🏆🏆🏆🏆 - If Notre Dame was ever going to claim additional national titles, this is one of the years that they should. 

National Championship Selectors: 🔢 for mathematical based selections, 🗳️ for voting-based selections. 

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🏆

1927

Final Record: 7-1-1

Final Ranking: No national rankings at this time

National Championship Selector: 🔢 Houlgate

Key victories: Navy in Baltimore, at Indiana, Georgia Tech (the Yellow Jackets upset Georgia that year, who had defeated eastern powerhouse Yale), tie with Minnesota, loss to Army at Yankee Stadium, win over Southern Cal in Soldier Field (the Trojans’ first loss of the season).

National Championship Claimed By: Illinois (7-0-1), Texas A&M (8-0-1), Yale (7-1)

• The Army teams that Notre Dame lost to in 1927 included “Light Horse” Wilson and “Red” Cagle who were in their seventh and sixth years of playing time, respectively, at the school. 
• The Southern Cal team included a player by the name of Marion Morris, who would eventually adopt the stage name John Wayne. 

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🏆

1938

Notre Dame Record: 8-1-0

Final Ranking: 5

National Championship Selector: 🔢 Dickinson

Key victories - No. 13 Carnegie Tech, No. 12 Minnesota, No. 16 Northwestern

National Championship Claimed By - TCU (11-0), Tennessee (11-0)

• In a frustrating pattern that points out just how special, competitive and legendary the Notre Dame - Southern Cal football series is, 1938 is one of many possible national title claims weakened by a late-season loss to the Trojans in Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. This year, No. 8 Southern Cal upset top-ranked Notre Dame 13-0. 
• There were a number of Notre Dame alumni who wrote letters to campus clamoring for the University to play TCU in the Cotton Bowl, but each of the letters to the athletic department were met with the same reply. “The faculty board in control of athletics legislated against any postseason football game and has consistently refused to rescind its policy.” 
• Notre Dame would not play in a bowl game until the end of the 1969 season, a limitation that would positively and negatively affect the team’s ability to win a national title on the field until the 1970 Cotton Bowl. 

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🏆

1967

Notre Dame Record: 8-2-0

Key Victories: Michigan State (preseason No. 3), Miami FL (preseason No. 5)

National Championship Selector: 🔢 Dunkel

Championship Claimed By - Southern Cal (10-1), Tennessee (9-2)

• The AP only ranked 10 teams in their national poll from 1962 through 1967. 
• This season is by far the weakest for any claim to a national title, but has to be added to this list because there was a recognized NCAA selector that pronounced the Irish national champions. 
• Notre Dame lost its only two games against ranked teams (No. 10 Purdue, No. 1 Southern Cal) but might have been playing some of the best football in the country at the end of the season. 
• It would take just one more season before the Irish began to participate in bowl games in the 1970 Cotton Bowl to cap the 1969 season. 

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🏆

2012

Notre Dame Record: 12-1

Final Ranking: 4

National Championship Selector: 🔢 Colley

Key victories: At No. 10 Michigan State, No. 18 Michigan, No. 17 Stanford, at No. 8 Oklahoma

Championship Claimed By - Alabama (13-1)

• Notre Dame lost the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) title game to Alabama this year and the Crimson Tide are the clear national title winners for 2012. At the end of the year, Colley still named the Irish as the national champions. 

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🏆🏆

1919 

Notre Dame Record: 9-0

Final Ranking: No national rankings at this time

National Championship Selectors: 🗳️ National Championship Foundation, 🗳️Parke Davis

Key victories: at Nebraska, at Army

Championship Claimed By - Centre (9-0), Harvard (9-0-1), Illinois (6-1), Texas A&M (10-0)

• Centre College, located in Danville, KY, was 57-8 from 1917 through 1924 and was retroactively named the national champion in 1919 by the Sagarin rating. 
• The 1919 Irish were affected by their noteworthy opponents having off seasons. Army lost three times, Nebraska finished 3-3-2 and Notre Dame’s Big Ten Conference opponents Indiana (3-4) and Purdue (2-4) were mediocre. 
• Notre Dame’s weak schedule wasn’t for lack of scheduling effort. Knute Rockne, in just his second season as the Irish head coach, went as far as to attend the Big Ten Conference’s annual coaches meeting in Chicago to “sneak in on a game.” The coach was told his team was “too powerful to be a set-up” but didn’t have “enough prestige to make an attraction.” 
• As Notre Dame’s Scholastic opined at the end of the 1919 season “the Notre Dame eleven should rightly be called ‘The Champions of the West.’ They met and defeated some of the strongest teams of the West, and their victory over the Army placed them at least on an equal with the much advertised teams of the East. The fame they achieved for themselves and for the school will be lasting, and associated with this fame is the feeling of all Notre Dame men, each one of whom is proud of the team and the school they represented.” 

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🏆🏆

1920

Notre Dame Record: 9-0

Final Ranking: No national rankings at this time

National Championship Selectors: 🔢 Billingsley, 🗳️ Parke Davis

Key victories: at Nebraska, at Army, at Northwestern

Championship Claimed By - California (9-0), Harvard (8-0-1), Princeton (6-0-1)

• The Notre Dame - Purdue game in 1920 was billed as the program’s first ‘Homecoming Game’ as extra bleachers were installed at Cartier Field for the event. 
• Knute Rockne continued to try to play the best teams from the Big Ten and was able to secure a game at Northwestern through Charlie Bachman, who was at Northwestern on staff and a former player at Notre Dame. George Gipp, affected by the illness that would eventually take his life, played his final game against the Wildcats. 
• Rockne had reached out in an attempt to play Harvard, which spurned Notre Dame and poured salt in the wound by scheduling a game with Valparaiso that same year, a school just 45 minutes away from Notre Dame. 
• University of Notre Dame president Rev. James A. Burns, C.S.C., limited the program to just one long trip for the season. The team had to travel by rail and would miss several days of classes. That forced the Irish to turn down possible games with Syracuse and Texas. 
• Rockne hoped an invitation would be given to the program by the Rose Bowl to play California, but Ohio State was selected. 

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🏆🏆

1964

Notre Dame Record: 9-1-0

Final Ranking: 3

National Championship Selector: 🔢 DeVold, 🗳️ Football News, 🗳️ National Football Foundation

Key victories: vs. Purdue (ranked in top 10 during the season), at Pittsburgh and a victory in the first-ever game between Notre Dame and Air Force in Colorado Springs

Championship Claimed By - Arkansas (11-0)

• Note that the AP only ranked 10 teams in their national poll from 1962 through 1967. 
• The curse of the Coliseum strikes again as a 20-17 loss at Southern Cal in the final game of the season ended what would have been recorded as the most amazing turnaround in college football history. 
• It was the first year of the Ara Pareshgian era, who inherited a 2-7 Notre Dame team from 1963 and turned them into one of, if not the, best team in the nation.
• This season is one of the most clear historically, as Arkansas defeated Nebraska in the Cotton Bowl and Alabama, the top-ranked team in the AP poll before the bowl games, lost to Texas. 
• This was another season in which Notre Dame’s choice not to play in a bowl game cost them a chance at the title. 

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🏆🏆🏆

1970

Notre Dame Record: 10-1

Final Ranking: 2

National Championship Selectors: 🔢 FACT, 🔢 Matthews, 🔢 Sagarin

Key victories: At No. 18 Missouri, No. 3 LSU, No. 1 Texas in the Cotton Bowl

Championship Claimed By - Nebraska (11-0-1), Ohio State (9-1), Texas (10-1)

• It was another possible title affected by a loss in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. This game, played in a driving rainstorm, saw Joe Theismann throw for a still-standing school-record 526 yards. 
• Was the championship truly lost in that rain storm? Nebraska was named the national champion by squeezing past LSU 17-12 in the Orange Bowl (to be fair, Notre Dame also squeezed by LSU 3-0 on Senior Day in November at Notre Dame Stadium) while the Irish dominated top-ranked Texas 24-11 in the Cotton Bowl. Nebraska also tied Southern Cal in September of 1970 in Los Angeles 
• The politicking before the final AP poll was released came down to bowl game decisions that the schools made before the final games of the season. Notre Dame chose to go to the Cotton Bowl focused on the assumed matchup with unbeaten and top-ranked Texas. Nebraska accepted the Orange Bowl bid that, no matter the outcome of the season’s final games, would not feature an unbeaten team. 
• “I think we played a tougher schedule than Nebraska,” Notre Dame head coach Ara Parseghian said days before the AP poll was released. “And I think we should be given credit for the fact that we accepted a less attractive holiday atmosphere to meet the top-ranked team … and we met the challenge.”
• Nebraska took home 39 first-place votes in the final AP polls, followed by Notre Dame with eight and Texas still getting three votes. 

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🏆🏆🏆

1941

Notre Dame Record: 8-0-1

Final AP Ranking: 3

National Championship Selector: None

Key victories - No. 6 Navy in Baltimore, at No. 8 Northwestern

Championship Claimed By - Alabama (9-2), Minnesota (8-0)

• The first season with Frank Leahy as the Notre Dame head coach is historically considered a sure national title for Minnesota. The Golden Gophers were ranked No. 1 at the end of the year and earned their fifth national title in eight years. 
• No recognized NCAA selector has pointed to the Irish as a national title winner. Why not Notre Dame? Navy was 10th in the final rankings and Northwestern 11th, while Army remained in the national polls until late November. 
• Alabama claims the title with two losses, including a setback to unranked Vanderbilt.
• More to the point, all national title arguments and focus were put to the side on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. 
• If travel was realistic and prudent, and if Notre Dame would have been allowed, a bowl game match up with Alabama or Minnesota might have provided a chance at a clear national title.  

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🏆🏆🏆

1948

Notre Dame Record: 9-0-1

Final Ranking: 2

National Championship Selector: None

Key victories - No. 8 Northwestern, No. 14 Michigan State

Championship Claimed By - Michigan (9-0)

• Another title shot ended in Los Angeles, this time a 14-14 tie against unranked Southern Cal in front of over 100,000 fans. Notre Dame’s Emil Sitko tied the team with 35 seconds remaining. The game was also an anomaly in the series between the two teams, as the home-and-home rhythm was interrupted by two straight trips to Los Angeles for Notre Dame in 1947 and 1948. 
• Why wasn’t Notre Dame even considered for a national title with just a single tie on the resume? 
• Ivan Maisel, author of the recently released book American Coach: The Triumph and Tragedy of Notre Dame Legend Frank Leahy, sums up the sentiment at the end of the 1948 season. “A year after Notre Dame won a close vote over Michigan for the 1947 national championship, the voters may have been inclined to give the Wolverines the benefit of the doubt,” Maisel said. “The comparative scores made it easy to do so. Michigan beat the four common opponents by larger margins, most notably a 28-0 defeat of Big Nine runner-up Northwestern, a team that Notre Dame later beat, 12-7. Michigan also beat Purdue, 40-0, two weeks after the Irish opened the season by defeating the Boilermakers, 28-27. The final Associated Press poll came out before Notre Dame finished the season with a 14-14 tie at USC, a result that closed whatever lingering debate there may have been.” 
• The Irish were not helped by their opponents Nebraska (2-8), Purdue (3-6), Pittsburgh (6-3), Iowa (4-5), Indiana (2-7) and Washington (2-7) all having down years. 
• Notre Dame received 93 of 333 first-place votes before that season-ending tie. 

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🏆🏆🏆

1989 

Notre Dame Record: 12-1-0

Key Victories: at No. 2 Michigan, at No. 17 Air Force, No. 9 Southern Cal, No. 7 Pittsburgh, at No. 17 Penn State, No. 1 Colorado in the Orange Bowl

National Championship Selectors: 🔢 Berryman, 🔢 Eck, 🔢 FACT, 🔢 Sagarin

Championship Claimed By - Miami Fl (11-1)

• The outcome of the 1989 season seemed cut and dry at the time. Seventh-ranked Miami FL had ended Notre Dame’s 23-game winning streak in the old Orange Bowl with a definitive 27-10 victory. The Hurricanes had lost earlier in the year to Florida State 24-10, then defeated No. 7 Alabama in the Sugar Bowl to claim the national title. 
• That national title, however, was made possible by Notre Dame defeating top-ranked Colorado in the Orange Bowl. 
• At the time of the national championship decision, it seemed to make logical sense to not put Notre Dame ahead of Miami FL since the Hurricanes won head-to-head on the field. This logic, however, would be thrown out the window just four years later. 
• “You can justify why Miami won,” Irish head coach Lou Holtz said when the final poll was released. “What you can’t justify is why we didn’t. No way.” 

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🏆🏆🏆🏆

1993

Notre Dame Record: 11-1-0

Key Victories: at No. 3 Michigan, No. 1 Florida State, No. 7 Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl

National Championship Selectors: 🔢 Matthews, 🗳️ National Championship Foundation

Championship Claimed By - Auburn (11-0), Florida State (12-1)

• The 1993 season was all a build up to the ‘Game of the Century’ when top-ranked Florida State visited No. 2 Notre Dame in Notre Dame Stadium on November 13. It was the first time ESPN’s College Game Day was in attendance live at a game site. It was, perhaps, the final event that would be covered by traditional college football media at such a high level as the internet would soon start to take over how fans consume content in the late 1990s. 
• Notre Dame won that signature game over Florida State, but stumbled the next week against No. 17 Boston College on a field goal at the end of the game. 
• Florida State jumped back up to the top spot in the polls and barely survived its Orange Bowl battle with Nebraska, getting luck at the end of the game that the Irish did not against Boston College when Nebraska missed a game-winning field goal as time expired and Florida State won 18-16. It was a game Florida State was  favored to win by more than 17 points.  
• There was a third team in the mix as West Virginia, out of the Big East Conference at the time, was undefeated at the end of the regular season. 
• The traditional mess of college football post season decisions continued as Florida State was matched up with Nebraska, West Virginia chose to play Florida in the Sugar Bowl and Notre Dame was set up with Texas A&M in the Cotton Bowl. 
• West Virginia was crushed 41-9 by Florida in the Sugar Bowl and eliminated from contention. 
• The precedent set in 1989, when there were two teams looked at as equals at the end of the season, of taking the head-to-head outcome was ignored in the end-of-the-year voting. 
• Speaking after his victory over Texas A&M, Holtz said “You (the media) gave it to Miami then (in 1989). I didn’t think you were right. I’m dumb, but I’m not that dumb, and I believe you now. If you used the (head-to-head) scenario then, I expected the same scenario in 1993.” 

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🏆🏆🏆🏆

1953

Notre Dame Record: 9-0-1

Final Ranking: 2

National Championship Selector: 🔢 Billingsley, 🔢 Boand, 🔢 DeVold, 🔢 Dunkel, 🗳️ Helms, 🔢 Litkenhous, 🗳️ National Championship Foundation, 🔢 Poling, 🔢 Sagarin, 🗳️ Williamson

Key victories - No. 6 Oklahoma , No. 15 Pittsburgh, No. 4 Georgia Tech, No. 20 Navy, No. 20 Iowa, No. 20 Southern Cal

Championship Claimed By - Maryland (10-1)

• For any season on this list, the 1953 team has the strongest argument to add a national title to the official count. 
• It was Frank Leahy’s last season with the Irish and he missed two games that season due to illness, including the final game at Southern Cal. 
• Notre Dame tied Iowa, who finished the season ranked ninth, 14-14 at home. 
• Maryland finished the season undefeated and at the top of both national polls, but it lost to No. 4 Oklahoma in the Orange Bowl. The same Oklahoma team that Notre Dame defeated, on its home field, to start the 1953 season. 
• As Notre Dame’s Scholastic wrote to review the season - “Looking back, we can truthfully say that it has been another great season. Most people say that this year's team will go down in the record books as one of our greatest. Only time will tell. One thing we do know, however, is that it was made up of the same stuff 64 teams before it had—the will to win.”