The 2003 NCAA Division I-A football season ended with an abundance of controversy, resulting in the claim of a split national championship. This was the first claimed split title since the inception of the BCS, something the BCS intended to eliminate. Due to on-field circumstances, the BCS becoming a means of having a single champion going forward, and finally the four-team title playoff system's institution in 2014, as of 2024 this is the most recent Division 1-A season to end with split national champions.

The BCS National Championship Game, or BCS National Championship, was a postseason college football bowl game, used to determine a national champion of the NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS), first played in the 1998 college football season as one of four designated bowl games, and beginning in the 2006 season as a standalone event rotated among the host sites of the aforementioned bowls.