Build Your Dynasty—Become a Legend ·Info on all new features including Impact Players and Breakaway Controls ·In-Season and off-season recruiting strategies for the new Dynasty Mode ·Details and stats on all 200+ teams and their Impact Players ·Each team's coaching strategy exposed ·A complete orientation for the new Race for the Heisman feature ·Favorite Passing, Running, and Option Plays for each formation ·All Pennants (cheat codes) revealed

From an award-winning sports journalist and college football expert: “A beautifully written mix of memoir and reportage that tracks college ball through fourteen key games, giving depth and meaning to all” (Sports Illustrated), now with a new Afterword about the first ever College Football Playoff. Every Saturday in the fall, it happens: On college campuses, in bars, at gatherings of fervent alumni, millions come together to watch a sport that inspires a uniquely American brand of passion and outrage. This is college football. Since the first contest in 1869, the game has grown from a stratified offshoot of rugby to a ubiquitous part of our national identity. Right now, as college conferences fracture and grow, as amateur athlete status is called into question, as a playoff system threatens to replace big-money bowl games, we’re in the midst of the most dramatic transitional period in the history of the sport. Season of Saturdays examines the evolution of college football, including the stories of iconic coaches like Woody Hayes, Joe Paterno, and Knute Rockne; and programs like the USC Trojans, the Michigan Wolverines, and the Alabama Crimson Tide. Michael Weinreb considers the inherent violence of the game, its early seeds of big-business greed, and its impact on institutions of higher learning. He explains why college football endures, often despite itself. Filtered through journalism and research, as well as the author’s own recollections as a fan, Weinreb celebrates some of the greatest games of all time while revealing their larger significance. “Wry, quirky, fascinating...This surely is one of the most enjoyable books of the college football season...Weinreb wrestles in captivating prose with the violence, hypocrisy, and corruption that are endemic to the sport at its most cutthroat level” (The Plain Dealer, Cleveland).

Build Your Dynasty—Become a Legend ·Info on all new features including Impact Players and Breakaway Controls ·In-Season and off-season recruiting strategies for the new Dynasty Mode ·Details and stats on all 200+ teams and their Impact Players ·Each team's coaching strategy exposed ·A complete orientation for the new Race for the Heisman feature ·Favorite Passing, Running, and Option Plays for each formation ·All Pennants (cheat codes) revealed

It took just 1.28 seconds to make history. On August 30, 2003, Katie Hnida became the first woman ever to play and score in NCAA Division I football. The struggle to get to that groundbreaking moment took eight long years, a journey filled with dogged commitment, horrifying setbacks, and finally, remarkable triumph. Fate came knocking for the 14-year-old Hnida in the unlikely form of a torn thigh muscle -- an injury that would drive her off the soccer field in search of another outlet for her athletic talent. She found football and with it gender-defying success. The same day Hnida's high school classmates voted her homecoming queen, she donned her helmet and pads and kicked six extra points in the homecoming game. When she is recruited to play for the University of Colorado Buffaloes, her great dream is realized, and she seems set for glory on a much larger stage. But upon arriving in Boulder, she begins a tour of hell inside the University of Colorado's football program, a hell that culminates in Hnida being raped by a teammate. It is here that the story truly begins. Katie is physically and emotionally devastated. She leaves the university and begins climbing her way back to who she was and what she wanted. She learns to speak about what happened to her and to push through harrowing flashbacks of violence. The very thing that drew her into the darkest days of her life will ultimately save her: football. She sends 80 kicking tapes to 80 Division I schools and is invited to visit several top football programs. But it is the blue-collar, no-nonsense team that wins her trust: the University of New Mexico Lobos. Under head coach Rocky Long, Hnida continues her long road to recovery through hard work and the will to never give up. She is not only accepted by her teammates, she also finds herself part of a team that's a family. In Albuquerque, Hnida is reunited with her dream. Under a true leader, she blossoms. Her teammates are teammates, supporting and encouraging her to reach her goal. And with just seven minutes and 20 seconds to go in a game against Southwest Texas, the history-making extra point kick is made in under two seconds, changing everyone's ideas about what is possible.

An in-depth exhaustive examination of college football's system in how they determine their National Champion at the FBS level of play. The facts and evidence within this research and literary work proves that college football does possess an un-fair systems in determining their National Champion. This research possesses over 100 Tables to support the facts and evidence to prove that the BCS was un-fair. The author did develop a selection and seeding process for a 16-Team Playoff format which is "Inclusive" to all FBS programs to be eligible for the $50 Million dollars on the table and to be called "National Champion".

The rules of the game have changed in the past hundred years, but human nature has not. "In March [1892] Stanford and California had played the first college football game on the Pacific Coast in San Francisco . . . The pregame activities included a noisy parade down streets bedecked with school colors. Tickets sold so fast that the Stanford student manager, future president Herbert Hoover, and his California counterpart, could not keep count of the gold and silver coins. When they finally totaled up the proceeds, they found that the revenues amounted to $30,000—a fair haul for a game that had to be temporarily postponed because no one had thought to bring a ball!"—from College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy, Chapter Three In this comprehensive history of America's popular pastime, John Sayle Watterson shows how college football in more than one hundred years has evolved from a simple game played by college students into a lucrative, semiprofessional enterprise. With a historian's grasp of the context and a novelist's eye for the telling detail, Watterson presents a compelling portrait rich in anecdotes, colorful personalities, and troubling patterns. He tells how the infamous Yale-Princeton "fiasco" of 1881, in which Yale forced a 0-0 tie in a championship game by retaining possession of the ball for the entire game, eventually led to the first-down rule that would begin to transform Americanized rugby into American football. He describes the kicks and punches, gouged eyes, broken collarbones, and flagrant rule violations that nearly led to the sport's demise (including such excesses as a Yale player who wore a uniform soaked in blood from a slaughterhouse). And he explains the reforms of 1910, which gave official approval to a radical new tactic traditionalists were sure would doom the game as they knew it—the forward pass. As college football grew in the booming economy of the 1920s, Watterson explains, the flow of cash added fuel to an already explosive mix. Coaches like Knute Rockne became celebrities in their own right, with highly paid speaking engagements and product endorsements. At the same time, the emergence of the first professional teams led to inevitable scandals involving recruitment and subsidies for student-athletes. Revelations of illicit aid to athletes in the 1930s led to failed attempts at reform by the fledgling NCAA in the postwar "Sanity Code," intended to control abuses by permitting limited subsidies to college players but which actually paved the way for the "free ride" many players receive today. Watterson also explains how the growth of TV revenue led to college football programs' unprecedented prosperity, just as the rise of professional football seemed to relegate college teams to "minor league" status. He explores issues of gender and race, from the shocked reactions of spectators to the first female cheerleaders in the 1930s to their successful exploitation by Roone Arledge three decades later. He describes the role of African-American players, from the days when Southern schools demanded all-white teams (and Northern schools meekly complied); through the black armbands and protests of the 60s; to one of the game's few successful, if limited, reforms, as black athletes dominate the playing field while often being shortchanged in the classroom. Today, Watterson observes, colleges' insatiable hunger for revenues has led to an abuse-filled game nearly indistinguishable from the professional model of the NFL. After examining the standard solutions for reform, he offers proposals of his own, including greater involvement by faculty, trustees, and college presidents. Ultimately, however, Watterson concludes that the history of college football is one in which the rules of the game have changed, but those of human nature have not.

A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year NCAA football is big business. Every Saturday millions of people file into massive stadiums or tune in on television as "athlete-students" give everything they've got to make their team a success. Billions of dollars now flow into the game. But what is the true cost? The players have no share in the oceans of money. And once the lights go down, the glitter doesn't shine so brightly. Filled with mind-blowing details of major NCAA football scandals, with stops at Ohio State, Tennessee, Texas Tech, Missouri, BYU, LSU, Texas A&M and many more, The System explores and exposes the complex, and perhaps broken, machine that churns behind the glamour of college football. With a New Afterword.

From New York Times bestselling author and Michigan football expert John Back, an analysis of the state of college football: Why we love the game, what is at risk, and the fight to save it. In search of the sport’s old ideals amid the roaring flood of hypocrisy and greed, bestselling author John U. Bacon embedded himself in four college football programs—Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, and Northwestern—and captured the oldest, biggest, most storied league, the Big Ten, at its tipping point. He sat in as coaches dissected game film, he ate dinner at training tables, and he listened in locker rooms. He talked with tailgating fans and college presidents, and he spent months in the company of the gifted young athletes who play the game. Fourth and Long reveals intimate scenes behind closed doors, from a team’s angry face-off with their athletic director to a defensive lineman acing his master’s exams in theoretical math. It captures the private moment when coach Urban Meyer earned the devotion of Ohio State’s Buckeyes on their way to a perfect season. It shows Michigan’s athletic department endangering the very traditions that distinguish the college game from all others. And it re-creates the euphoria of the Northwestern Wildcats winning their first bowl game in decades. Most unforgettably, Fourth and Long finds what the national media missed in the ugly aftermath of Penn State’s tragic scandal: the unheralded story of players who joined forces with Coach Bill O’Brien to save the university’s treasured program—and with it, a piece of the game’s soul. This is the work of a writer in love with an old game—a game he sees at the precipice. Bacon’s deep knowledge of sports history and his sensitivity to the tribal subcultures of the college game power this elegy to a beloved and endangered American institution.

Social media has forever transformed the recruiting process for college football. For coaches, it's an efficient way to connect, recruit, and collect information about players. For the players, it's a powerful and revolutionary tool to promote themselves by providing information that may not otherwise be available to coaches. Through the use of three popular web-based resources: YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, a student-athlete can build a multi-media platform to effectively showcase their strengths, abilities, and interests. This presents an overall public image that will promote positive interest from college coaches. The days of having to pay hundreds of dollars for an online recruiting service to market yourself as an athlete are over. Now you can create a free and effective web-based platform to connect with college coaches and effectively promote your talent for football. Recruit Yourself gives valuable advice on the modern NCAA scholarship process and reflects the knowledge and insight that Mickey Dollens has accumulated throughout his experience as a high school and collegiate athlete.