Customer Reviews

ESPN College Football Encyclopedia: The Complete History of the Game

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

The ESPN College Football Encyclopedia (ECFE) is a large book detailing a lot of stats on college football teams. Unfortunately, not all the stats listed in the book are true. For example, on page 782 the University of South Florida (USF) is shown to have lost it's first ever game vs Kentucky Wesleyan when in fact USF won that game 80-3! Granted, USF is not a well known school, but for the ECFE to tout that first game as USF's worst memory when USF won that game is sad indeed for an encyclopedia with the endorsement of "A great history book and arguement settler..." Especially when it is a fact that could have been easily checked via any of the USF media guides issued since that first season.

I originally posted this review in 2005, and since then have added 2 additional paragraphs. I left what I had originally written unchanged as to paint a clear picture of my feelings towards this book and how they have changed.

This book has everything anyone could ever want about college football. For most schools, every score to every game they ever played in are listed, and the capsules (which run 2 1/2 to 4 pages) are excellent.

However this book is not without its problems, which become more numerous the more I read. First of all the conference standings section seems incomplete to me. After 1952 there are no standings for the Southern Conference which at that time was at least as powerful a conference as the Ivy league, who's standings are included. There are also no standings at all listed for the Missouri Valley conference, a conference that included Louisville, Cincinnati and Tulsa among other Division 1-A participants. There is also no explanation as to why some schools (such as Middle Tennessee State or UConn) only have their Division 1-A scores represented, while other schools who spent a significant ammount of time as a Division 1-AA (such as Marshall) have all of their scores, including the lower division games, included.

There also seems to be a lack of effort put into editing this book. One example is for Notre Dame's 1997 scores, it lists the Independence Bowl as a game at Hawaii. Another example is the 1954 conference standings, Virginia is listed as a member of the ACC and as an indpendent, with two different records.

The sheer amount of material makes this book worthwhile, but given these mistakes that I have noticed in four days of owning this book it is hard to value this wealth of information very highly. Maybe I am nitpicking, but I cannot recomend a book that was so carelessly thrown together. Unfortunately this is the only book of its kind out there, so if you are interested in this kind of information you may be stuck with it.

I ordered this book the day it came out, so I have had it now nearly three years since I wrote this review. Notwithstanding the above statements, I have enjoyed this book. I also purchased 50 Years of College Football: A Modern History of America's Most Colorful Sport when that book came out and these two together are a good choice for your college football library.

It's now been five years since I purchased this book, and I have concluded that its value as a reference is zero. The factual errors keep cropping up, so now I have absolutely no idea if any data in this book is correct Currently I use this large tome as a device to flatten things, because that is all it is good for.

This is obviously a monumental work, reminiscent of a similar book put out during the 1930s and 1940s by author Christy Walsh. However, with all of the resources at the disposal of ESPN, one would think that there would have been better proofreading and/or fact checking. Many have already pointed out what to them are relatively basic errors that should not have been made. Let me add another that may be the most basic yet. In the Conference Championship section, the Big Ten is listed as the very first named conference. Anyone with even a little knowledge of the Big Ten knows that back in the "olden days" the conference was known as the Western Conference, and was not officially named the Big Ten until the 1980s.
Having said that, let me add that overall this appears to be a very goood resource. Unfortunately, anyone using it as a research tool will have to double check these facts, something that ESPN has failed to do on a few occasions.

The words "must have" are used liberally by Amazon.com's reviewers. But few products are deserving of being called a "must have'. This book is one of them.

The book's shortcomings (some editing and accuracy issues) are well-documented by other reviewers. I have no doubt these will be corrected in future editions (in fact, ESPN invites readers to send in their comments and corrections). But to me, these problems are like college football itself with its flawed attempts to determine its national champion (I am, of course, referring to I-A college football). The problems do not detract from a great product.

What this book achieves is remarkable. The full flavor of what makes college football the best sport in the world are here--the traditions, the rivalries, the larger than life personalities, the arguments that never lose their potency despite the passage of time. The fact that every season of every team is documented alone makes the book worth the hefty price. How cool to go back to games you attended as a kid and think about them anew as an adult. The book is never out of reach during the season and it helps fill the gaps between seasons. It's a great achievement written by college football fans for college football fans.

This work represents a huge research project covering nearly 1700 pages of
crowded text. It is sort of a biblia for college football. It covers
All-time scores, Heisman voting, program profiles, best players and coaches
dating back to 1869 in some cases. This publication is for the discriminating statistics gatherer of college football facts. It covers
a plethora of leagues and programs including important history on
African American teams. The acquisition would be a perfect gift for the
college student in your house. Every college football coach should own one!

Some reviewers have noted imperfections; however, the subject matter is so
extensive that virtually any work on the subject of college football would
be incomplete in one aspect or another. The acquisition is a good value
for the depth and quality of the information contained.

I keep this book chair side throughout the college football season and refer to it other times as well. There is great info on each Div 1 team, and it's great to learn how certain names, traditions, etc. were started. A season by season schedule with scores is great as well. If you love college football, get it today.

My daughter is an absolute football fanatic!! She LOVES this book.
I decided to purchase it for my nephew who is also a big time football enthusiast. I Highly recommend it to anyone interested in football.