September 18, 2005

ESPN College Football Encyclopedia

If you're in the market for a thick tome of College Football facts and trivia, pay attention: ESPN's College Football Encyclopedia is simply a must-own book for all college football fans.

The beginning of the book has a lot to offer the college football fan, from an engrossing list of great moments in college football history all the way through to the College Game Day Crew (Chris Fowler, Lee Corso and Kirk Herbstreit). In between you're treated to a handful of thoughtful essays about coaches, sportsmanship, offenses, and even movies about college football. And this is all before you get into the real meat of the book: more facts and figures than you would even WANT to shake a stick at.

There are box scores from every major bowl game ever played. The "annual review" section has information going as far back as 1869 and for more recent years includes the consensus All-Americans, Heisman Trophy voting results, bowl game scores, statistical leaders, and more.

But one of the most interesting sections of the "Annual Review" is the poll progression list. Which shows you every week's poll for the entire season. The chart includes the rank in the major polls, the record, and the team's performance in that week... giving you a great way to find out what happened in a given season at a glance.

All of those parts are great and wonderful and very, very interesting, but the meat of the book -- the part on which the editors spend over 1,000 pages -- is the school-by-school run down. You'll get some of the school's "bests" (best season, best team, best coach, and so on) as well as a quick summary of record-holders, factual minutiae, and a fair bit of prose on the team itself.

What sorts of things might a person learn from these team capsules? Well, one might learn how many first-round NFL draftees Florida State has had (29), how many national titles Auburn has won (just one), NC State's all time leading rusher (Amos Lawrence, 4391 yards), that Bob Hope once "Dotted the 'i'" at an OSU game, or even who won the Kansas/Missouri game in 1901 (that'd be Kansas, 18-12).

I guess the point that I'm trying to make here is that the book is impressive and exhaustive. There are, no doubt, errors here and there (which is bound to happen when you're compiling this much data) but I've not run across any of them myself, and there's really very little that's left out entirely.

Regardless, whether you're using it to brush up on your own knowledge of the game or just to settle bets with friends, you really need to head out to your local book store and pick up a copy or, if you want to save a few bucks, check out the book at Amazon.

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