Conference Championship Week — excuse me, “Champ Week,” as ESPN has rebranded it — is afoot and leading us directly into Selection Sunday. For college basketball junkies, it doesn’t get much better than the week-and-change of tournaments played across the country.
Conference tournaments have given us such memorable moments as the 2009, six-overtime classic between Syracuse and Connecticut, or the 1996 “Allen vs. Allen” encounter Aaron Torres covered for FoxSports.com.
This edition of 5 For Friday honors the gridiron’s version of #ChampWeek: the first weekend of December. Conference championship weekend hasn’t yet established the same history as basketball’s 11 days of tournaments. Other leagues took time to follow the SEC’s lead in 1992; the ACC followed suit in the 2000s, and the Big Ten and Pac-12 only jumped on board four years ago.
The Big 12, the second conference to implement a title game, abandoned its finale in 2011.
Regardless, the relatively brief history of conference championship games in college football has provided a bevy of memorable moments. Click the page numbers for the five best, infallibly ranked by yours truly.
