In 2015, when Ohio State took on the University of Oregon in the first College Football Playoff championship game, millions of sports fans tuned in. But back in 1869, when Rutgers University and Princeton University played the first-ever college football game, no one predicted the national spectacle that a college football championship game would become. Author Matt Doeden takes readers on a journey from the disorganized games of the early years to...

"Eric Bittle may be a former junior figure skating champion, vlogger extraordinaire, and very talented amateur pâtissier, but being a freshman on the Samwell University hockey team is a whole new challenge. It is nothing like co-ed club hockey back in Georgia! First of all? There's checking (anything that hinders the player with posession of the puck, ranging from a stick check all the way to a physical sweep). And then, there is Jack-- his very...

"By the face of The Big Ten Network, the story of the creation of the college football nation from 1890 to 1915, the intense media coverage, the academic fraud, recruiting scandals, shocking violence, new sports superstars, and the manifest destiny of football out of the Ivy League and to the Great Midwest"--Provided by publisher.

Millions of people follow college football with great passion, enjoying beloved traditions and exciting game action. For many players, however, college football is more than just fight songs and school spiritits a big step on the road to pro football. The truth is that only a select few make that transition, however. How is that situation affecting how college football is played and run? What changes are coming that will balance the scales? Or is...

John J. Miller delivers the intriguing, never-before-told story of how Theodore Roosevelt saved American Football-a game that would become the nation's most popular sport. Miller's sweeping, novelistic retelling captures the violent, nearly lawless days of late 19th century football and the public outcry that would have ended the great game but for a crucial Presidential intervention. Teddy Roosevelt's championing of football led to the creation of...

"The dramatic expose of how the University of Oregon sold its soul to Nike--and what that means for the future of academics and college sports. In the world of college sports, winning means big dollars. But that money often comes at a cost. University of Nike explores the University of Oregon's complex relationship with its corporate partner, Nike, and how the arrangement has undermined the school's academic integrity, transparency, and campus culture....

Close your eyes and picture the Heisman Trophy. The form is easy to conjure, a graceful, fluid pose that is football past and football present in one dignified figure ... The story of the Heisman Trophy is an american epic. -- from the Preface No sport in America can match the pageantry, raw emotion, and thrilling tradition of college football. It is a world in which a twenty-year-old kid can become a national sensation overnight, in which...

God created college football as a grand gift to an imperfect world. I learned this as a very small boy living in the middle of the Texas Panhandle. In time I would come to believe that college football contained all of the joy, faith, pageantry, feeling, failure, and renewal that any person could hope for out of life. It taught me about patience and commitment, about enthusiasm and exasperation, about fatherhood and faith. Like Norman Maclean's classic,...

"For ESPN's Ryan McGee, football is a lifelong passion formed from growing up as the son of Dr. Jerry McGee, a man who wore stripes for decades as one of the most highly-decorated officials in college football history. In Sidelines and Bloodlines, Ryan McGee teams up with his father and brother to share lessons learned between the white lines, featuring a cast of characters that runs from no-name small college athletes and coaches to one-name legends...

One gambler is a manic former cokehead with an Ivy League degree. The second is a college dropout trying to make a living at the only thing he enjoyed at school, gambling. The third, one of Vegas's most respected bookmakers, is perilously close to burning out. The Odds follows the lives of these three professional gamblers through a college basketball season in a one-of-a-kind city struggling to reconcile its lawless past with its family-friendly...