Customer Reviews

College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy

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Ever since publication of the landmark work on college football's history by Allison Danzig in 1956 ("The History of American Football"), sport historians have been patiently waiting for another well-written work about college football's storied past which would bring the tale up to modern times. After any number of unsuccessful attempts by various authors, at long last we have that book with the release of John Watterson's "College Football" by John Hopkins Press; a work that is recommended by this reviewer.

Watterson, a professor at James Madison University, has previously delivered talks and written a considerable number of articles on the early history of college football, and to his book "College Football" he brings the same attention to research and an easy-to-read style of writing that has characterized his earlier work.

Rather than droning on endlessly about one season after another in college football's past that dates to 1869, Watterson has instead tackled football's history by using each chapter to examine the predominate and notable events through the years that served to gradually transform the game into what we see today. The result is a history of college football that provides an essential foundation for the novice historian, while still providing plenty of new and interesting material for the more experienced reader.

The author takes up his story with the origins of big-time football in the 19th century, including the major controversies of the 1890s that evolved from the game's increasing violence and serious injuries. After examining the crisis of 1905-1906 when college football faced the threat of being outlawed, Watterson moves on to review the more significant battles over the rules in 1910 that directly provided the origins of modern football. The struggles of 1910 ultimately overcame Walter Camp's continued opposition to forward passing and eliminated the mass plays that had evolved since 1906, a topic that is one of the most significant in the sport's history yet is frequently ignored in most attempts at football history.

Watterson continues the story of college football with the over-emphasis and abuses of the 1920s; then moves on through the hard times of the Depression, the war years, and the challenges of de-emphasis in the 1950s. A considerable amount of this material is the result of the author's tireless research, and again touches on significant material seldom seen in other football histories.

After examining the many areas that characterized the game's entry into the big-money days made possible by television, along with the NCAA's attempts at controlling the frequent recruiting scandals; the author sconcludes with chapters on African-American plays at predominantly white schools, and the revolt of the major universities against the NCAA that led to the formation of the College Football Association (CFA).

"College Football" by John Watterson is an essential work for anyone interested in the history of the intercollegiate game.

A useful book for everyone who has a long-lasting interest and knowledge on the College Football, but it can be a little bit dazy and hard-to-understand for the beginners. College Football by Watterson is an analytical book which also solves the past-time football's problems according to the periods national crisis' and situations with huge acknowledgements. If you already have a good knowledge on College Football, then you will find a lot of interesting things in this book; if you have no or a little knowledge, then I will suggest you to read easier books to prepare yourself for this book. I really liked reading and learned a lot from this book though.

College Football is an outstanding and important work. It is a true history--not a greatest teams and greatest players-type of celebratory writing--and falls under the rubric of sport history. Sport history, which is a subcategory of social history, relates sports to broader themes in society, and John Sayle Watterson in this regard does a terrific job in relating the history of football to the issue of collegiate life as a whole, and even to society as a whole (particularly where the colleges had to fight the pro game for the public's entertainment dollar).

College Football is published by a university press (Johns Hopkins), but it is marketed as a trade book. Thus, the misleading subtitle "History-Spectacle-Controversy," as there is not much spectacle in this book. But there is plenty of controversy, relating to violence, subsidies, and cheating scandals throughout the sport's history and the mostly failed attempts by the college football establishment to reform the sport.

Watterson's work is actually a more narrow history of the governance of college football, rather a broad history of the sport (Johns Hopkins surely did not want to put the word "governance" in the title). As such, however, College Football is the best overview of the subject ever written, primarily because the author takes the story from the beginning up to the present day.

I have some minor carping: there is an excessive number of typos and errors in this book for a university press book.

This enlightening book covers the history of college football from an interesting and neglected point of view. That is to say, it contains none of the usual lionisation of players and coaches, and no re-working of big games we're all familiar with. Rather, Watterson examines (and questions) the place of the game in American society and its role on campus. The book establishes quite clearly that the over-emphasis placed on gridiron is hardly a recent phenomenon or even (as I foolishly suspected) down to the evils of television - that schools have been fielding ineligible players, fiddling grades, and operating slush funds from the days of Walter Camp. Watterson details the various movements which have attempted to reform the game and how it is run, and explains lucidly why virtually all of them failed. A seemingly insatiable desire for victory and glory to the alma mater has resulted in a gradual yet steady erosion of the original purpose of sport on campus, to the point where today a college President can express a desire to "build a university the football team can be proud of" without a trace of irony.

The book's only real fault lies in some woeful editing, which results in a few stories being re-told, and several paragraphs being repeated almost word-for-word many pages later (not to mention some grammatical howlers which don't strike me as being the author's fault). I found myself able to to overlook this, though, and can unreservedly recommend it. It may not be one which the more avid Sooner, Fighting Irish, Crimson Tide, or Buckeye-backer will gravitate toward, but those who enjoy big-time football and yet abhor how tainted it has all become will find it difficult to put down.

I purchased this for my dad because he is an absolute college football fanatic. He seems to really love the book. He started reading it immediately after he opened. Seems like a real page turner.

The book reads like a college paper, but is extremely well researched. If you enjoy history and football, you'll love this book. But don't expect to read about the past champions and players. This book is about the development of the college game and it's numerous, unending controversies. We all fantasize about the "Good Ol' Days" of college athletics and presume that there was a time when the "Student" came before the "Athlete" in vernacular as well as in practice. This book explores the idea that, in reality, the "Athlete" has always come first, despite the well-intentioned efforts of the academicians.

I didn't exactly breeze through this book. I'd put it down from time to time, read another book, and come back to it. I personally found the later chapters to be the most interesting, probably since the book is in chronological order and the issues were familiar. They must have re-edited the book because I didn't see many grammatical or typographic errors, as others have mentioned.

Pick it up if you like college football, but keep a couple other books in reserve.

I don't have opinion on the book itself, but the seller is really nice. Customer service is fast and accountable. Thank you.

This a dry read and takes some effort as it is essentially an academic tome that is concerned with the evolution of modern college football from a political, policy, and business standpoint. But it is quite thorough and hits the nail on the head. The final pages discuss how the game can be saved .... since reform is not an option. This is the weakest part of the book, but understandably so since it would take the wisdom of Solomon to fix this problem. I have always felt that a return to one platoon football makes a lot of sense regarding costs (less insurance, travel and equipment, scholarship dollars).

The editing in the book leaves something to be desired. There are a number of typos - and a few sentences that make contradictory statements. The author is not a well versed student of the game since there are several technical mistakes which indicate some deficiencies in research. Some of these are listed below as examples.

(1) Identifying Brian Bosworth as an Oklahoma lineman when he was a linebacker,
(2) Claiming All American status for 4 years (1982-1985)for a very average SMU running back,
(3) Confusing the major Western Athletic Conference (WAC) with the minor Rocky Mountain Conference,
(4) When describing the 1943 game between the College of the Pacific (COP) and USC attributing Pacific Coast Conference (PCC) membership to COP which was in fact an independent school during the 40's and never was a member of the PCC or its later version, the Pac 10.

That said I highly recommend the book for anyone interested in the history of college football.

Mr. Watterson has presented us with a volume that is unique among sports books - a comprehensive history of college football and its relationship to college life and American society. I recommend it for two reasons:

1. It is incredibly well researched; Watterson has spent years digging through college and university archives around the country. He has amassed a mountain of valuable information about the progression and development of the college game that is not available elsewhere.

2. Despite being an academic, the author writes in a style that is easily readable. In my experience, it is rare to find a scholarly book that is also comprehensible to a lay audience.

Though it has many positives, there are two major flaws that drive me to distraction.

1. Watterson insists on repeating himself, sometimes making the same point in the very next paragraph or on subsequent pages. At times, I found myself wondering whether I had mistakenly lost track of my place in the book and was reading a page that I had already covered. The author's tendency to rehash previously made points slows the reader's progression and makes each chapter significantly longer than it needs to be.

2. The index is woefully incomplete. For example, references to Glenn "Pop" Warner are listed on three pages - 137, 146 and 172 - but more information about him appears on page 180. Likewise, Richard "Von" Gammon is referenced in the index on pages 36-38, but he also appears on page 47 (misspelled as Richard Gammen). There are many such instances in the index.

Nevertheless, this book is very valuable for the many nuggets of insight and history that bubble to the surface. The information contained in this volume is found nowhere else, and far outweighs the drawbacks in writing and editing.