New York Times Names UConn Their 2020 College Football National Champion

Throughout college football history, you will find years where multiple national champions were crowned. If you go on this Wikipedia page, you'll see there are years where even 3 national champions were named!

From 1979 to 2004, the New York Times named a national champion. They were the only newspaper in the history of college football to name a national champion. They did it for 25 years and took off the past 15. Today, they returned to name a champion....

That's right, UConn, who played zero games this year, is your 2020 NYT national champion.

SOURCE-Who will be college football’s next national champion, Alabama or Ohio State? The correct answer should be neither.

The team we should be cheering won’t be on the field at Hard Rock Stadium near Miami next Monday.

The real champion?

The University of Connecticut, which was the first Football Bowl Subdivision team to squarely face the coronavirus and decide against playing a single snap during a raging pandemic.

Sometimes the right thing to do is the hardest thing to do and that's what the University of Connecticut did this year. Yes, UConn would've found themselves with a defeated record this year, but that doesn't mean they didn't want to play. The decision was difficult. Others who made it ending up reversing it. Not UConn. They stood STRONG.

In August, it seemed as if a full-fledged collegiate football season might not happen. That’s when Connecticut, ranked among the worst teams in the nation, rose to the top of the heap, killing its season and leading the sport toward sanity.

Trendsetter. 

To celebrate their accomplishment, head coach Randy Edsall gave an interview with the NYT.

In the end, out of 130 F.B.S. teams, only three sat out the season: Old Dominion and New Mexico State joined Connecticut. “It was simply the right thing,” UConn Coach Randy Edsall said over the phone last week. “I never questioned the decision we made. Not once.”

Many coaches in the college football world even reached out to UConn to say that they were jealous of them during their national championship season:

“For us, there was none of that uncertainty, that wear and tear on the mind that other teams felt,” he said, adding that he had heard from several coaching colleagues at other schools who envied what his team had done. He could sense the stress and worry in their voices. Edsall felt none of that.

If one thing is clear, it's time to print the shirts and hang the banner. UConn Football…2020 National Champion.