Why do people in sports especially college football use term defending champion?

It makes no sense. People said Alabama was the team to beat. However they most likely will not play for a BCS champion and LSU and South Carolina still has no chance of winning a championship even though they beat them. Alabama like Gatos of 08-09 proved they were the best team the year they won. However as of recently they were not.|||Because they won the championship last year, and are the champs till someone else becomes the champ. I agree in college football it doesn't mean a whole lot, because teams change so much from year to year. Auburn is number 2 in the country this year, and last year they won like 7 or 8 games, and need overtime to beat Northwestern, after knocking Northwestern's kicker out of the game. In 2002, when OSU won, they were a 7-5 team the year before.|||Yea but there have been alot of repeat champs and that team is trying to DEFEND the title but that is why we play the game to see if someone can defend it or not|||well Alabama won the BCS title last year, there are still Champions until someone else wins the title. so they are trying to defend their championship and win it again. so they are defending their title.|||because the team is defending themselves because they were the champions so they are defending champions|||Because that team is the defending champion...|||because they are trying to DEFEND their championship title.|||I wouldn't know. I'm too busy watching wide rights.