It really dates back to the earliest years of college football when teams only played other local programs so they had groups of pollsters vote on who the national champ should be. Funny thing is, nobody cared about nattys back then. Conference and regional titles were the big prize. Fast forward 150 years and the NCAA still has a list of “recognized” national polls. Some well known like the media AP poll, some completely unknown to most college fans. The Colley-Matrix poll, which I believe was one of the original computer polls used for the old BCS is still used today. It’s completely non-subjective as it’s just a numbers formula. UCF finished #1 in that poll and thus can claim a NCAA recognized national title. It’s stupid and a total publicity stunt by UCF whatever. I think Miami has two or maybe even three unclaimed titles. A ton of schools have them also.