Okay, so I was super curious about how many national championships the Oregon Ducks have in football. I’ve heard different things, and I wanted to get to the bottom of it myself. So, I started digging!
My Little Investigation
First, I hit up my go-to search engine. I just typed in something simple like “Oregon Ducks football championships.”
I scrolled through a bunch of articles, and honestly, it was a little confusing at first. Some sites talked about conference titles, which are cool, but not what I was looking for. I wanted the big one – the national championship.
I kept digging, and I started to see some mentions of the 1917 Rose Bowl. Back then, there wasn’t a formal national championship game like we have now. Apparently winning the Rose Bowl was a really big deal.
I found some older articles and records, and it looked like Oregon (or the “Webfoots” as they were called back then!) beat the University of Pennsylvania in that game. The score was 14-0. They were undefeated that year! Some sources credit them with a national championship for that season because of it.
Then came the research about more recent history.
I checked out info about the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) and the current College Football Playoff.
It shows that The Ducks has appeared in two National Championship games, and lost.
Oregon played in the 2011 BCS National Championship Game against Auburn, but they lost in a very close match.
And then, they also played in the 2015 College Football Playoff National Championship against Ohio State, and unfortunately lost that one too.
Putting it All Together
So, after all my searching, here’s what I figured out:
- Officially recognized national championships: 0
- Claimed national championships (based on the 1917 Rose Bowl win): 1
- National Championship game appearances: 2
It’s kind of a tricky question! Depending on how you look at it, they either have one “claimed” title from way back when, or none that are officially recognized in the modern college football system. But one thing’s for sure – they’ve been close a couple of times in recent years!
