At the highest level of play in the sport, every single college football national championship, ever, at least until this past season, is a "claimed" national title. Outside Division II and III, zero have been awarded by the sport's governing body, the NCAA, and they still are not. There was also no such thing as a "consensus" title prior to 1950 when the two-poll system began, and even then, consensus is not equivalent to unanimous. It is a word that has been defined by the NCAA's record book to mean a championship that has been awarded from one of the following four national championship selecting organizations since 1950: AP, Coaches, FWAA, or NFF. That means, in the NCAA's record book, it could list up to four different "consensus" national champions for any one season. That is the meaning of "consensus", and that meaning is practically meaningless. Until around1968-1970, bowls weren't even factored in to the national polls as they were viewed more as exhibition games. Modern understanding of college football national championships is quite different than it was 50 years ago, let alone 90. What has happened with the BCS and College Football Championship is that these titles have slowly been unified, not unlike unified titles in boxing.
And it is a complete misunderstanding to say that the NCAA recognizes anything. They don't, not pre-1950 or post-1950: not one single D1A/FBS football national championship. They have zero to do with college football title decisions in 1A/FBS...never have...and still don't. All the NCAA does is list other selecting organizations' (which one or two unaffiliated college football historians have deemed as having been contemporaneously national in scope with their selections) in their official records book as a matter of historical data. That is all the NCAA does. And by that, Pitt has been awarded a national championship by a selector of national scope in 11 different seasons. According to College Football Data Warehouse, which is the most comprehensively researched listing of awarded national championships, Pitt has been awarded a national championship in 16 different seasons.
Of these 16 or 11, Pitt claims 8, and this claim is based not on these lists, but on a 1970 researched compilation of other selecting organizations' national championships by Sports Illustrated that was the first ever attempt of such a compilation (at least which was put out by a national publication). Comparatively to these other lists, SI actually found and published that Pitt had been awarded a title in a different year (1934) from those other 16 mentioned above. Since 1970, that is now well over 40 years, Pitt has always based its championship claims on that neutral, third-party, 1970 SI study, and then, along the way, added its AP/Coaches' title in 1976 to get to its claimed total of 9.
Of those 9, the weakest claim is the one from the SI study (1934) that doesn't show up many other places because it was published in a football almanac after Parke Davis' death but under his byline. That said, except for that 1970 SI study, every single national championship site and most contemporaneous selectors recognizes Pitt's 1910 undefeated and unscored upon team as that season's national champions. Pitt, however, does not recognize 1910 itself because it was not in the 1970 SI study. So, regardless, Pitt is well within a margin of legitimacy to claim 9 because that number is based on a third party compilation with most seasons, or at least a similar (or greater) number of years, supported by newer studies (at least well researched ones). Really, based on what other schools have been doing recently (like BC, Texas A&M), Pitt could easily claim 11 to 17.
