Allstate BCS National Championship Game

The BCS National Championship game is the final game of college football's Bowl Championship Series, pitting the top two teams in the BCS standings following regular-season play to determine a national champion. The game became a standalone contest for the 2006 college season, after a number of years in which the game was rotated among four bowl games (Rose, Orange, Fiesta and Sugar). Those bowl sites and their organizing committees now take turns hosting the BCS National Championship Game, which is annually scheduled in the week following New Year's Day. The 2012 BCS National Championship game was won by Alabama, giving the Crimson Tide their second national title in three seasons.

Unlike other NCAA sports, college football (at the highest, Division I-A level) did not use a postseason playoff system to crown its national champion, instead relying on a number of polls over the years to determine an annual champion.

After years of controversy surrounding this method, a postseason system was launched in the 1990s aimed at addressing the issue, which has emerged into the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) to determine a national champion in college football.

The BCS -- in various forms -- has been around since 1992. In that year, five conferences and independent Notre Dame joined together with six bowl games to create the Bowl Coalition, which would assign the top two teams in the nation to a national championship game and still allowed for conference-bowl tie-ins.

That system was amended three years later, when in 1995 the system was reformed as the Bowl Alliance. That agreement eliminated conference tie-ins in bowls, allowing the bowls to create better matchups. It also, more importantly, included two at-large spots open to all of Division I-A, as opposed to only the five conferences included in the agreement.

Many critics still found problems with the Alliance, mostly in the fact that the Pac-10 and Big Ten were eliminated because of their contracts with the Rose Bowl. In 1997, the Rose Bowl agreed to join the Alliance -- along with its two conferences -- if it could be included in the rotation to host the national championship. That agreement became, in 1998, the Bowl Championship Series.

The No. 1 vs. No. 2 game, starting in 1998, rotated between the Fiesta, Orange, Rose and Sugar bowls through 2005. The system remained in place until a standalone BCS Championship Game was added for the 2006 college season, to be played between the No.1 and No. 2 teams in the BCS standings.

Florida opposed Ohio State in that first BCS National Championship, with Chris Leak leading the Gators to a 41-14 victory in January 2007. And after SEC rival LSU took national championship honors (over Ohio State) the following year, Florida returned to glory in January 2009 by defeating Oklahoma 24-14 in the BCS National Championship Game.

In 2010, Alabama completed an undefeated campaign by topping Texas in the BCS National Championship Game, played at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. The following year, Auburn extended the SEC's national championship streak, defeating Oregon on a last-second field goal.

The following season, the SEC made more history, as conference rivals LSU and Alabama faced each other in the BCS National Championship Game. It was the first time in the BCS era the top two spots went to schools from the same conference. In the game, Alabama avenged a regular-season loss, defeating LSU, 21-0.