PIGSKIN WARRIORS: COLLEGE FOOTBALL'S GREATEST TRADITIONS, GAMES AND PLAYERS
Description:
Every true college football fan has experienced it; an alumni or student from another team wearing a T-shirt, breathlessly informing you and the world that his team has won “eleven national championships,” or was the “1932 national champions,” or some such variation on the theme. The fan scratches his head and thinks to himself, “Wait a minute . . . my alma mater was the national champion that year,” or “I thought that school had the most national championships . . .”
The media has picked up on it, reporting random and scattered bits of incomplete and often entirely incorrect intelligence as if it is fact. Now, for the first time, well regarded sports historian Steven Travers has sifted through the propaganda, the myths, the falsehoods and half-truths to deliver true, honest reportage on well over a century of the popular American pastime of collegiate football.
As we approach the 140th anniversary of college football in 2009, here is the bottom line when it comes to national championships; those that are legitimate, those that history now regards as bogus, and those that would have been awarded had fairness and accuracy been the overriding theme of the given day. Travers also compiles an impressive list of Heisman Trophy and Outland Trophy winners; All-Americans; bowl performances; all-time winning records; winning streaks, great runs, decades and dynasties; pro football representation; and a host of other detailed criteria. He combines his extraordinary research – legitimate versus illegitimate national championships, the modern versus the “leather helmet” era - giving weight and heft to storied tradition and panache. He tells a tale of the sport’s role in society, the growth of television, and of college football as big business, all outlined against a “blue, gray October sky” of American history.
The result? The author breaks down well over a century’s worth of the pigskin game, separating the great from the good, the elite from the great; the best from the rest; until in the end College Football’s All-Time Top 25 Traditions stand tall and proud in an Associated Press-style poll, telling the story not of a single year, but of an entire American century. At the top of this poll stands a single champion; a program, a tradition, a record that is so impressive they are adorned the title “national champions of college football history.” This title for the New Millennium is theirs to wear, and for future stars to try and defend with every ounce of energy, strength and pride they have, as we embark on the twenty-first century.
So here it is: the statistics, the stories and the lore of a game that has and will continue to dominate fall Saturdays for another hundred years to come.
The media has picked up on it, reporting random and scattered bits of incomplete and often entirely incorrect intelligence as if it is fact. Now, for the first time, well regarded sports historian Steven Travers has sifted through the propaganda, the myths, the falsehoods and half-truths to deliver true, honest reportage on well over a century of the popular American pastime of collegiate football.
As we approach the 140th anniversary of college football in 2009, here is the bottom line when it comes to national championships; those that are legitimate, those that history now regards as bogus, and those that would have been awarded had fairness and accuracy been the overriding theme of the given day. Travers also compiles an impressive list of Heisman Trophy and Outland Trophy winners; All-Americans; bowl performances; all-time winning records; winning streaks, great runs, decades and dynasties; pro football representation; and a host of other detailed criteria. He combines his extraordinary research – legitimate versus illegitimate national championships, the modern versus the “leather helmet” era - giving weight and heft to storied tradition and panache. He tells a tale of the sport’s role in society, the growth of television, and of college football as big business, all outlined against a “blue, gray October sky” of American history.
The result? The author breaks down well over a century’s worth of the pigskin game, separating the great from the good, the elite from the great; the best from the rest; until in the end College Football’s All-Time Top 25 Traditions stand tall and proud in an Associated Press-style poll, telling the story not of a single year, but of an entire American century. At the top of this poll stands a single champion; a program, a tradition, a record that is so impressive they are adorned the title “national champions of college football history.” This title for the New Millennium is theirs to wear, and for future stars to try and defend with every ounce of energy, strength and pride they have, as we embark on the twenty-first century.
So here it is: the statistics, the stories and the lore of a game that has and will continue to dominate fall Saturdays for another hundred years to come.
