ESPN College Football Encyclopedia - The Complete History of the Game Description:

ESPN College Football Encyclopedia : The Complete History of the Game review:
4 stars (Best of its kind, but watch out for all the flaws) - 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.
3 stars (Great resource, but not without faults) - 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.
2 stars (Overall pretty good, but there is a downside) - 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.