We all know that the Notre Dame Fighting Irish football program claims 11 national championships. We hear this about 100-1000 times each year, and fans use it as a comfort food of sorts when we start looking at the last 25 years.

We are ALL wrong here - or at least we are going about it all wrong.

The UCF Knights are claiming a national championship in 2017 after going unbeaten, and instead of being mocked mercilessly by fans, they are being embraced. Sure there are a few media members that want to remain super "OH HELL NO" on the topic, but by and large people love the idea. And UCF is totally serious about it too.

Claiming national championships is an art form that was established well before the BCS and College Football Playoff eras. Before those modern methods of science came along, it was really up to the schools SID's (and others within the administration) to determine if they were champions.

The Alabama Crimson Tide is well known for this.

In the 1980's Wayne Atcheson did exactly that.

“As far as I’m concerned, I’ve always felt Notre Dame had the most and it would be a long time until anybody would catch them,” said Wayne Atcheson, a former Alabama sports information director. “I have always admired their tradition and heritage. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know how many they claim. I just think about ours.”

Back in the mid-1980s, Atcheson added five pre-Bryant national titles to Alabama’s media guide that continue to be claimed: 1925, 1926, 1930, 1934 and 1941.

Hmmm. Not without irony, the Auburn Tigers recently claimed three more titles (1913, 1983, and 1993).

The Irish, however, try to stand on some sort of moral high ground as if the rest of the college football elite should do the same. No one cares about morality here - this is college football.

Recently, our friends at SB Nation published a list of who should have won the "consensus" national championship and their number has Notre Dame still sitting at 11, but the 1953 season is included.

With all that in mind, we here at One Foot Down recognize 21 National Championships for Notre Dame: 1919, 1920, 1924, 1927, 1929, 1930, 1938, 1943, 1946, 1947, 1949, 1953, 1964, 1966, 1967, 1970, 1973, 1977, 1988, 1989, and 1993.

Notre Dame's most recent national championship in 1993 saw an incredible 11-1 campaign with a HUGE win over the best team the Florida State Seminoles ever had, and it was topped off with a win in the Cotton Bowl against the Texas A&M Aggies.

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