Marty Lyons: ‘We should have won 3 national championships in a row’

Big-time college football will crown its champion via a 12-game postseason this season, the next step after 26 seasons of the playoff era.

NCAA FBS tried to match the top two teams in a national-championship game from 1998 through 2013, and a four-team playoff decided the title for the previous 10 seasons.

Before the playoffs, major-college football’s national champion was picked by the polls. The Associated Press’ poll of sports writers started in 1936, and the American Football Coaches Association began taking a poll of coaches in 1950. And before the polls, there were things such as the Dickinson System, sort of a computer ranking before computers.

All came with lots of arguments, disputes and controversies, later enhanced by a variety of organizations and football nerds awarding retroactive national championships.

But every so often during the poll era, college football got lucky and the No. 1 and No. 2 teams squared off in a bowl.

That’s how defensive lineman Marty Lyons got his national championship, and he was in the middle of it when No. 2 Alabama defeated No. 1 Penn State 14-7 in the Sugar Bowl on Jan. 1, 1979. The Crimson Tide secured the 1978 AP title on a goal-line stand, with Lyons famously advising Penn State quarterback Chuck Fusina to throw on fourth down before Alabama stopped the Nittany Lions again at its 1-yard line.

(The coaches didn’t see it the same way as the sports writers. The coach vote had Southern Cal No. 1 in the final poll. Alabama and the Trojans had one loss apiece, and USC had beaten the Tide 24-14 in Birmingham in the third week of the season.)

The 1978 crown might have been one of three national titles for Lyons, but the polls didn’t break Alabama’s way in two other 11-1 seasons. At the very least, Lyons figures he should have been in on two-thirds of a three-in-a-row championship streak by the Tide.

But there’s no way of knowing if a playoff system would have worked in Alabama’s favor either, of course.

“I don’t know if one more game would have mattered or not,” Lyons said. “We should have won three in a row because in 1977 we really did beat Ohio State, and then we come back in ’78 and we beat Penn State, and then of course they win it the next year.

“But you know what? Every victory you got to hold on to, every national championship you got to hold on to. One day the game of football’s going to end for all of us.”

In 1977, Alabama lost at Nebraska 31-24 in the second week of the season, then won the rest of its games, including a 35-6 victory over No. 9 Ohio State in the Sugar Bowl.

The Crimson Tide entered its game against the Buckeyes ranked third in the AP poll. No. 1 Texas lost to No. 5 Notre Dame 38-10 in the Cotton Bowl, and No. 2 Oklahoma lost to No. 6 Arkansas 31-6 in the Orange Bowl. But Alabama didn’t ascend to No. 1. Instead, Notre Dame finished on top of the polls, with the Tide at No. 2.

During Lyons’ first season with the New York Jets, Alabama posted a 12-0 record in 1979 for back-to-back poll titles, although the Tide went into the Sugar Bowl at No. 2. Alabama defeated No. 6 Arkansas 24-9 while No. 1 Ohio State lost to No. 3 Southern Cal 17-16 in the Rose Bowl. This time, the Tide did rise to No. 1 as the nation’s only undefeated, untied team.

In Lyons’ freshman season, Alabama lost its opener 20-7 to Missouri, then won the rest of its games. No. 1 Ohio State and No. 2 Texas A&M lost in bowls, but the No. 4 Tide moved up only one spot for the final poll after a 13-6 victory over No. 8 Penn State in the Sugar Bowl. Oklahoma won the 1975 poll title at 11-1 after the No. 3 Sooners defeated No. 5 Michigan 14-6 in the Orange Bowl, and Arizona State shot up from seventh to second by completing an undefeated season with a 17-14 victory over No. 6 Nebraska in the Fiesta Bowl.

Lyons went on to play in 11 seasons with the Jets, the first stage of an ongoing association with the NFL team that has him preparing for his 23rd season as the analyst on the radio broadcasts of New York’s games.

Along the way, Lyons was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame. But through the Marty Lyons Foundation, he also became a philanthropist who saw a bigger picture than national championships and football fame.

On Sunday, Lyons joined the Senior Bowl Hall of Fame during a ceremony at the Grand Hotel Golf Resort and Spa in Point Clear. On Monday, he played at Lakewood Golf Club in the Senior Bowl Charities Celebrity Golf Classic with the other Class of 2024 inductees and the Senior Bowl’s NFL Rookie of the Year Award winners.

“What matters is at the end of the day is how much money did we raise for those who can’t raise it themselves,” Lyons said. “And that’s the important thing. I have a foundation for terminally ill children. Next week is my golf outing. And for 42 years I’ve been working with kids that unfortunately are getting cheated out of life. Sixty percent of the kids will die before they reach the age of 18, and we’ve been able to help over 8,400 families and raised about $43 million. We’re now in 14 states.

“You realize through the whole ordeal that the platform that God gave me was football. But the purpose wasn’t just to become a Hall of Famer, wasn’t to become part of the New York Sack Exchange. The purpose was to find that platform to help these kids. … Every one of these kids, you create hope for them, you create hope for their family, and to be honest with you, they won’t care how good you were on the playing field. You just made them feel special.”