With the growth of bowl games , it became difficult to determine a national champion in a fair and equitable manner . As conferences became contractually bound to certain bowl games ( a situation known as a tie-in ) , match-ups that guaranteed a consensus national champion became increasingly rare . In 1992 , seven conferences and independent Notre Dame formed the Bowl Coalition , which attempted to arrange an annual No. 1 versus No. 2 matchup based on the final AP poll standings . The Coalition lasted for three years ; however , several scheduling issues prevented much success ; tie-ins still took precedence in several cases . For example , the Big Eight and SEC champions could never meet , since they were contractually bound to different bowl games . The coalition also excluded the Rose Bowl , arguably the most prestigious game in the nation , and two major conferences — the Pac-10 and Big Ten — meaning that it had limited success . In 1995 , the Coalition was replaced by the Bowl Alliance , which reduced the number of bowl games to host a national championship game to three — the Fiesta , Sugar , and Orange Bowls — and the participating conferences to five — the ACC , SEC , Southwest , Big Eight , and Big East . It was agreed that the No. 1 and No. 2 ranked teams gave up their prior bowl tie-ins and were guaranteed to meet in the national championship game , which rotated between the three participating bowls . The system still did not include the Big Ten , Pac-10 , or the Rose Bowl , and thus still lacked the legitimacy of a true national championship . However , one positive side effect is that if there were three teams at the end of the season vying for a national title , but one of them was a Pac-10 / Big Ten team bound to the Rose Bowl , then there would be no difficulty in deciding which teams to place in the Bowl Alliance " national championship " bowl ; if the Pac-10 / Big Ten team won the Rose Bowl and finished with the same record as whichever team won the other bowl game , they could have a share of the national title . This happened in the final year of the Bowl Alliance , with Michigan winning the 1998 Rose Bowl and Nebraska winning the 1998 Orange Bowl . Without the Pac-10 / Big Ten team bound to a bowl game , it would be difficult to decide which two teams should play for the national title
Big East
Big East Conference (1979–2013)
College football