Bowl Games: College Football's Greatest Tradition [Hardcover]

Robert M. Ours (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2004

More than a century ago, Michigan and Stanford played a football game to top off the annual Tournament of Roses New Year's celebration in Pasadena, California. Little did those dusty players know that this first postseason college football game would eventually lead to one of the most watched and anticipated series of sporting events in the country, competitions that would generate millions of dollars and be used to decide the national champion.

In Bowl Games: College Football's Greatest Tradition, historian Robert M. Ours shows how these games established college football as a national sport. Bowl games were also used as charity events and morale boosters during the Great Depression and both world wars, and were among the first public forums that challenged segregation in the South. In addition, Ours traces the steady march toward using bowls to determine a national championship as well as the increase in payouts. Throughout, amazing athletes and teams appear, some well-known, others forgotten. The gridiron exploits of Kentucky's tiny Centre College in the early 1920s and the great Hardin-Simmons squads of the 1930s and 1940s are featured along with top performances from future professional stars, such as Don Hutson, Jim Brown, and Tom Brady. Some of the greatest matchups in the history of football occured at bowls, including Alabama's near upset of heavily favored Duke in the 1945 Sugar Bowl and Ohio State's double-overtime victory against Miami in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl. The book includes period photographs, year-by-year bowl game summaries, and a complete list of every major NCAA-sanctioned bowl played up to 2005.

Whether or not a playoff system in Division I-A college football emerges, and no matter what format bowl contests take, there will always be dramatic matchups, superlative individual performances, and enduring memories of college football's postseason play.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In the same way that NFL games have come to represent one aspect of the traditional Thanksgiving experience, various college football bowl games have, for some decades, dominated New Year’s Day (sports-wise, at least). College football junkie Ours (College Football Encyclopedia; College Football Almanac) intends to illustrate how the 102-year bowl history is "largely a history of college football itself." Alas, like a sluggish game, his book suffers from a plodding pace, monotonous delivery of facts and scattershot prose. Some early chapters are interesting, as they chart the development of postseason games in the late 19th century, focusing especially on Pasadena. Readers may also perk up when coming across details about ill-fated bowl games, such as the Gotham and Aviation bowls. Ultimately, though, Ours is less interested in discussing bowl games in their sum than he is in taking readers year by year through their entire history. He introduces most years by offering a canned, often inappropriate historical fragment (e.g., "Just as bowl bids were being considered following the 1963 regular season, America underwent a national trauma with the assassination of President Kennedy") before getting back to the task at hand: a dry recitation of games, players and statistics without drama or context. This work will likely be of great interest to true enthusiasts, but a deadly chore for most others.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"An outstanding reference for collegiate football collectors, particularly those interested in team collecting or program collecting." -- Gridiron Greats, Winter 2005

"The first work to focus comprehensively on the history of college bowl games. . . . The author writes well." -- Choice, Association of College and Research Libraries

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 243 pages
• Publisher: Westholme Publishing; First edition (November 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594160015
• ISBN-13: 978-1594160011
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,465,071 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A terrific football book, November 16, 2004

By 

A reader from Chicago - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bowl Games: College Football's Greatest Tradition (Hardcover)

This book is an excellent history of how college football was transformed by bowl games. Most fans take these games for granted, but for many years there was only the Rose Bowl. Because that game featured teams from different parts of the country, the Rose Bowl slowly became the focus of deciding the best team in the nation. In the 1930s, the Cotton and Sugar were added, and from there, postseason games took off, until their results were not only used to determine the national champion, they forced the AP poll to take its final poll after these games once a few "national champions" got clobbered in bowls! Throughout, there are great anecdotes and photos. The appendices are very useful as well. It is amazing to read about Bobby Layne's 40-point performance in the Cotton Bowl, running, throwing, kicking, and catching. I found the book to be quite enjoyable.
As a final note, I agree whole-heartedly with the author that it is a shame that New Year's Day is no longer the special bowl game day it once was. It was a wonderful tradition for decades, but that has gone by the wayside with the BCS format. Oh well. By the way, readers, I have no idea what book that Publishers Weekly reviewer was looking at! Must not have been a football fan is all I can tell.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Valuable addition to Football Lore, May 17, 2005

By 

C. Ash - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bowl Games: College Football's Greatest Tradition (Hardcover)

Bowl Games is a must addition to the collection of any college football fan with an interest in the sport's history and development, and especially in the creation and progress of postseason contests. This book contains all of the scores of NCAA-sanctioned bowl games since the first contest on New Year's Day 1902, with attendance figures and records of participating teams. It also includes a number of vintage photos of bowl games, and many of the outstanding team and individual bowl records.

Within the space constrictions of the book, the author in his narrative includes much anecdotal material on many games as well as highlights of the more important contests. The book catches the flavor of the days when the football season reached a climax with the New Year's Day contests while putting the modern bowl craze into perspective.

All in all, a good read and a great resource.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Excellent reference, but narrative plods after good start, February 1, 2005

By 

Edward W. Trieste (Caldwell, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bowl Games: College Football's Greatest Tradition (Hardcover)

This is a useful source that traces 100 years of bowl games, but I was hoping for more than it delivered.

The book is an excellent reference. Every certified bowl is listed, and there are many interesting facts about bowls not easily available in one place. Ours discusses the origins of every long-established bowl, particularly the Rose. He then narrates each bowl's yearly results as "college football's greatest tradition" develops. By doing this he also traces some of the college football story. We learn how the Depression, World War II, and the civil rights struggle affected the bowls. Early on, Ours also gives more than passing attention to especially notable games and teams and touches on numerous little-known, short-lived games.

Unfortunately, the book changes about halfway through. A flowing description of the bowl and college football atmosphere becomes a plodding, dry recitation of scores and statistics. Ours tries to give some text to nearly every bowl, a worthy but tedious goal as the bowls proliferate. Sidebars spotlighting great games and performances would help. Their lack leaves an unbroken narrative that drowns out the human element with a monotonous recitation of scores, rankings, yards gained...

By the late 1980s, most bowls had title sponsors. Ours clearly loves tradition, yet he chooses to always call bowls by full corporate names. Perhaps he wants to emphasize how tacky sold names are without openly saying so? In any case, this annoyed me.

The narrative improves when the book reaches the Coalition/BCS period, as once again Ours talks about a bowl issue.

The book, completed in mid-2004, ends with the changes caused by the 2003 BCS fiasco.

In an epilogue, Ours reminisces on his first bowl memories (New Year's, 1947!), and discusses recent changes. He opines that the plethora of bowls, the various coalitions, and today's January 4 finale has diluted the magic that used to surround the bowls. (He's right!)

I appreciate the yearly summaries, but I was hoping for more discussion. Some questions I was hoping to see answered include:

* The NCAA and bowls: How is a game certified or decertified? Ours opines that there are too many bowls. Is the NCAA able or willing to do something about it?
* The Fiesta Bowl: How did this recent bowl displace the Cotton as a top bowl?
* The Orange, Sugar, Cotton, and Sun Bowls all started in the mid-1930s, yet the Sun never became prestigious. Why not?

I also would have appreciated some more treatment of the greatest and most important games and performances through the years. A chapter spotlighting games like the 1963 Rose, 1979 Cotton and Sugar, 1980 Holiday, 1984 Orange, and 2003 Fiesta would have greatly added to the book's strength. A subjective list of the 10 greatest games, coaches, and performances would make for some nice juicy arguments.

An appendix lists every game chronologically with teams' win-loss records, including the defunct games (omitted by many references). Some overall records are also listed. Surprisingly, there is no list of national champions.

If you want a useful reference about the bowls, this is a good choice. If you want the definitive book on bowls, this isn't it. Perhaps that book hasn't been written yet.

I am pleased with what the book does offer, I am glad I own it, and I learned facts about the bowls - but "Bowl Games: College Football's Greatest Tradition" could have been much more than it is.