50 Years of College Football: A Modern History of America's Most Colorful Sport | 
 enlarge | Authors: Bob Boyles, Paul Guido
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
Buy New: $14.48
You Save: $10.47 (42%)
New (23) Used (7) from $14.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 189422
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 1312
Shipping Weight (lbs): 4.4
Dimensions (in): 10.9 x 8.5 x 2.3
ISBN: 1602390908
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.33263
EAN: 9781602390904
ASIN: 1602390908
Publication Date: August 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080725212931T
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Product Description
This is a must have for any serious fan of college football. Thoroughly documenting every key moment and statistic from the 1955 season to the 2007 NFL draft, it is simply the most comprehensive encyclopedia of the sport ever written. It’s perfect for fans looking for in-depth information like starting lineups, career statistics, AP Polls, NFL draft lists, and award winners, and has stats organized both by season and team. But, with expert facts and opinions on the game, this guide goes beyond mere number-crunching to get at the heart of collegiate competition. With profiles of the more than 100 stars and coaches, and more than 6,500 recaps of key games, it is a fun read as well as an essential reference.
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 A must-have reference that trounces ESPN January 6, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
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.
50 Years of College Football December 21, 2007
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.
 Great stuff December 19, 2007
This book is such a great resource. Year-by-Year it gives team records, awards, NFL drafts. It even gives reports on games! This is a must have for any college football fan
Great resource December 15, 2007
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?
Second Edition Still Not Perfect, But Remains The Best Resource For College Football November 9, 2007
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
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.
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