College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy: weight, height, design, sponsor
Although the NFL is considered the most popular American sport, winning the NCAA National Championship Trophy is also the ultimate achievement.
If you are a football fan, then you know which one you would rather have. The Vince Lombardi trophy is the pinnacle of the NFL, but a college national championship is the true king of the hill.
With 32 teams across only 22 states, more than half of the USA has no NFL team they can call their own. The franchise model complicates this further, with teams simply upping sticks and heading across the continent seemingly at will; local favor is always more in tune with the colleges. It makes sense when considering the sport’s origins as an amateur, scholastic endeavor.
More than bragging rights
For generations, the notion of a national champion was controversial; with regional and conference bowl games pitting top teams against the best available opposition, it was often in dispute who was actually the “champion.”
This dispute was brought into sharp relief by the 2005 USC Trojans, who lost to the Texas Longhorns in the Rose Bowl, ruining in their eyes their chance to three-peat as national champions. The problem arose when LSU fans pointed out that the Tigers had, in fact, won the 2003 national championship, taking out billboards around the USC campus to drive the point home.
Ripe for a change, the NCAA tightened its belt on the Bowl Championship Series, which had been around but largely ignored since 1998. It was discontinued in 2014 and replaced with the College Football Playoff. And with the new playoff bracket to decide the champion, a trophy was needed.
That same year, the College Football Playoff National Championship Trophy was unveiled, offering the winner something more substantial than simply pride. At 26.5 inches tall and 35 pounds, the oblong-shaped trophy tapers into a flattened full-size football at the top.
Made of 24-karat gold, bronze, and stainless steel, the trophy depicts a four-laced football, representing the four teams competing in the playoffs.
The trophy is separate from its 12-inch-tall bronze base, so it can be hoisted. The base alone weighs 30 pounds and is sponsored by Dr. Pepper at a cost of $35 million a year.
The reigning champions are the Georgia Bulldogs, but in the finals, we’ll see the Washington Huskies against the Michigan Wolverines at the SoFi Stadium on the night of January 8.