Customer Reviews

50 Years of College Football: A Modern History of America's Most Colorful Sport

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

From the first page, 50 Years of College Football bombards you with just about everything you'd want to know about the sport from 1953 through 2006. From thousands of season and game capsules to yearly records, rosters, and the greatest players lists of 70 major football schools, the data is immense, useful, and fun to peruse.

The problems are minor, but glaring. The book suffers from a bit of a consistency problem. For instance, among Georgia Tech players, names are spelled correctly in one part of the book and misspelled in another, like "Eddie Lee Ivory" and "Keith Brookings". Joey Hamilton (once referred to as "Joe" and "Joey" the rest of the time) is even listed as being drafted from "Georgia" in the 1999 NFL draft list.

The other problem is more of a personal caveat: none of the yearly rosters have any kickers or punters listed in any year, even though they're referenced aplenty in the rest of the book. Some may not particularly care about that, but it's a shame that they were excluded.

Despite these flaws, 50 Years is the best college football resource on the market today. No college football fan should be without it.

Fifty Years of College Football is a little-known giant of a book that blows away the competition like the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia. Fifty Years even has a bonus...it actually chronicles 54 football seasons of all the important college teams, and does it in an amazingly detailed style. It supplies information on the top 70 football programs that can be found in very few books of this type.

For example, ESPN's book offers scores of games but otherwise all but ignores the exciting action that took place on the field. For its part, Fifty Years chronicles every important moment in more than 7,000 important college games. ESPN spoons up inconsistent "teams of the century" for each school while Fifty Years taps each major school's best 54 players, arranged as a squad ready to take on the world. Very cool!

ESPN provides a chart of each team's season leader in stats while Fifty Years lists each starting player and many reserves on offense and defense and supplies all the important stats in each season during the modern era since the early 1950s.

Boyles and Guido make football history come alive, and their amazing effort is massive, and an incredible bargain.

If you are a college football fan, this is a must have. This book has stats and scores and standings so in a way it is similar to the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia: The Complete History of the Game(which I own and reviewed) but what sets this book apart from that one, and what makes it far more itneresting, are the game (for major games for every week during the season, plus bowls) and season recaps. Essentially the game recaps are the same as what you would read in the newspaper the day after the game, and the season recaps give a one page description of the stories and trends in each of the seasons from 1953 to 2006.

The second half of the book lists the 70 (arguably) most notable college football playing schools since 1953 with scores and school records, as well as starting lineups for each school for these years. This section isn't any better than the similar section in the ESPN book, a lot of the info here is the same but this book does have the above mentioned starting lineups.

The product information describes this book as getting "to the heart of college football competition" and being a "fun read". I agree whole heartedly with those statements. If you want one book to cover college football history, this is the book to get. If you read the reviews and the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia seems a better fit for you, I still recomend buying this book alongside that one.

This book is an excellent resource for the sport of college football. It has the stats and the recaps of all major college grid-iron games in the past 50 years. This is more of an almanac type book as opposed to a story and feature type of book, so be sure what you are looking for. For a stat and info person like myself, it was perfect.

This is the best college football history book I have found. It covers every week since 1953. It has the starting line up of the top 70 college teams for all those years.
It has a year by year wrap up of awards, bowls and polls. It has the All-American teams. You'll never find a book on college football that has the complete history this book contains.
The book settles a lot of arguments.
I purchased this book for many of my friends
The book is well put together and the information is easy to find.

This thing is a behemoth. Over 1300 pages and a lot of it is in small type. So, what is 50 Years of College Football? Authors Bob Boyles have compiled something that has to be the most inclusive review of the last 50 years of college football available. It just as easily could have been called "The College Football Dictionary" as that's what it resembles.

It provides a review of 70 teams over the years 1953 to 2006. Each review contains basic school information, and career, season, and game statistical leaders - typical of stuff you'd find in a school's media guide. The reviews include won-loss records, coaching records, and bowl records, the scores of all games - stuff that isn't hard to find if you're a powerhouse school, but may be difficult if you're trying to find information on someone lesser known. The season's starting lineups and statistical leaders are also included - that is information that can be very hard to find, especially if you're interested in going back all the way to 1953.

The yearly reviews start with an entertaining and informative overview of each year, highlighting events on and off the field. As an example, the 1961 review relates how the Ohio State faculty voted down a Rose Bowl bid, resulting in the Columbus Dispatch printing each voting faculty member's name, address, and amount of reimbursed out-of-state travel they'd had over the past year. We're told that Woody Hayes was pivotal in quelling potential student riots. (Ah, the good old days!)

The preseason rankings are provided, and a recap of games played between ranked teams and many rivals are reviewed, which comes to more than 7,500 game recaps total. These don't include every game ever played, but obviously a huge number of them, including a "Game of the Year" for each season. .Each year concludes with a listing of conference standings, bowl game reviews, All-America teams, Heisman Trophy voting along with other major award winners. As if that weren't enough (but wait, there's more!), you also get the first eight rounds of each season's NFL draft.

There is a freakish amount of information in 50 Years of College Football, almost too much. At a cost under $20 (see the Amazon price above), it's pretty affordable as a historical reference. It's handy for bloggers like me to go back and find something interesting to write about and it should be in the hands of any college fans that likes to "one-up" their friends. Hmmmm.... wouldn't that be just about all of us?

When you're feeling down on your college team, this is a great reference of the past 50 years. It will help the reader understand each team experiences ups and downs through the years. There is solid research and quality observations by the authors about college football. Perfect reading for the college football fan!

The book starts out with inaccurate statistics. This has to be on the part of the authors. It is easy to find the winningest teams of all time the list should be accurate. Coverage of the selected teams is poor. For 15 years of research this is garbage. The selection of teams is poor. The top teams are included as they should be. Some of the teams included should rarely be mentioned in the discussion of college football; while some of the of the teams that have been at the heart of the college football discussions over the last ten years are excluded. If you need kindling here you go. If you are interested in college football DO NOT WASTE YOUR MONEY!!!