Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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67 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Room for improvement, but the best of its kind, October 2, 2005
At last, a well-organized comprehensive reference for college football history!
The heart of the book is the chapters for the 119 I-A programs and the annual reviews of every season.
Each school gets 3-6 pages of text, citing their best player, coach, and team, their biggest upset and heartbreak, their fight song, and more. Annual leaders, All-Americans, national titles, and game scores are included. The Ivies, Grambling and 18 other historically black schools are also covered, though less thoroughly.
The annual reviews include standings, bowls, All-Americans, the top 10 Heisman Trophy candidates, statistical leaders, and weekly polls.
Another section includes box scores of every certified bowl ever played, with pre- and post-game ranks of the teams and MVPs. There are also essays on the state of the game, coaches, recruiting, integration, college football at the movies, the polls, computer rankings, the eternal playoff debate, and more.
At 1630 (!) pages, this is probably the most complete reference on college football history ever published.
There is clearly room for improvement:
* Amazingly, there is no list of national champions anywhere in the book! This is particularly confusing for the pre-poll years. Navy's chapter claims a share of the 1926 title. Who did they share it with? I had to check elsewhere: Alabama and Stanford. Stanford's chapter, but not Alabama's, claims this title.
But even in the poll years, things are sometimes unclear. Notre Dame's chapter claims 21 titles (11 outright, 10 split), but lists only 8: those won in the two major polls. Stanford's chapter says 1926 was its only title, but then claims 1940. At least five teams - Tennessee 1938, Stanford 1940, Georgia 1942, Mississippi 1960, and Ohio State 1961 - are called consensus champions although neither the AP nor the coaches concurred.
* Chapters for I-A newcomers may or may not include I-AA scores. For example, Marshall's are listed but not Connecticut's. There appears to be no rhyme or reason.
* I'd like to know how many schools were classed as major/I-A in any given year. The standings include the Ivies before and after they became I-AA in 1982, but omit the I-A Southern Conference from 1953-81.
* The Sports Encyclopedia: Baseball includes a short summary for each season with its statistics. I hope this book adopts this excellent feature in the future.
OK, I've dwelled enough on the book's imperfections, which mostly occur because the book falls short of its own high standards. A great deal of facts not easily available elsewhere are here in this book. That by itself earns five stars.
The ESPN College Football Encyclopedia, like baseball's 1969 Macmillan Encyclopedia and 1989 Total Baseball, sets a new standard for its sport. I predict it will be reissued regularly and become steadily more accurate with new and better features and essays.
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39 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Best of its kind, but watch out for all the flaws, September 2, 2005
This is the best college information resource I have seen. It has always been difficult to find an ACCURATE source of college football scores; this comes closer to that goal than many others' previous attempts. The year by year poll information is particularly helpful. The essays are interesting, and the brief summary information on each of the schools is very good.
But I have found too many nitpicky errors to be entirely satisfied. One problem is the lack of "key" information, which makes deciphering a lot of information difficult. What does "RB" mean in the final polls? I THINK it refers to the R Billingsley poll, but the book is silent. I know some of the key information on Southern California's list of games is wrong--USC never played in Pendleton or Albany, Oregon, and the Key fails to explain that the neutral site reference to "FIE" means Fiesta Park in Los Angeles. And lots of neutral sites are not listed at all.
I have not "audited" the book to see if all the scores are accurate, but the amount of errors here and there causes concern. But, this is a must book for the serious college football researcher, with enough "prose" info to be of interest to the casual fan.
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36 of 40 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Great resource, but not without faults, September 2, 2005
I'd really echo what the first reviewer wrote, that this is a valuable book hurt by some poor editing. And since this publication is meant to be a complete and authoritative source for college football, those mistakes detract from its overall value.
The capsule looks at each program are great. Not only can you look back at scores and performance from past years, but the leaders for each team are a useful resource. It's fun to look at certain schools, to see how their fortunes have risen and fallen over long periods of time. The historical polls are also enjoyable to look at, for much the same reason, seeing which teams have stuck around near the top for long periods of time, while others come and go.
The essays are also interesting, although I would have liked a few more of them. I don't think they need to give a comprehensive history of the college game (those already exist), but examining certain trends or particular eras/teams would have been a nice addition.
This book really does fill a niche for the sports fan, and even with some errors this book is well worth the price. However, I think that any great reference work should be completely authoritative, and that's where this one falls short. A great book, but one whose next edition should really be a 5-star effort.
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