NCAA Football's Finest" Answers That Question in Terms of NCAA Historical Records
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football finest cover 2/22/02 10:45 AM Page 1 NCAA ® FOOTBALL’S FINEST FOOTBALL’S FOOTBALL’S FINEST The NCAA's career statistics to nearly 3,000 of the finest players and coaches to be associated with collegiate football National Collegiate Athletic Association NCAA 16306-2/02 FF01 FBF Initial Pages 2/22/02 10:33 AM Page 2 THE NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION P.O. Box 6222, Indianapolis, Indiana 46206-6222 317/917-6222 www.ncaa.org February 2002 Records and Research Compiled By: Steve Boda Jr., Richard M. Campbell and James M. Van Valkenburg, NCAA Statistics Service. Edited By: Scott E. Deitch, Communications Coordinator Designed By: Wayne Davis, Graphics Manager Production Design By: Toi Davis, Production Designer II Brandon Allen, Production Designer Distributed to Division I sports information departments of schools that sponsor football; Division I conference publicity directors; and selected media. NCAA, NCAA logo and National Collegiate Athletic Association are registered marks of the Association and use in any manner is prohibited unless prior approval is obtained from the Association. Copyright, 2002, by the National Collegiate Athletic Association. Printed in the United States of America. NCAA 16306-2/02 FBF Initial Pages 2/22/02 10:33 AM Page 3 Contents Foreword.............................................................. 4 Players, 1901-1969.............................................. 9 Players, 1970-2000.............................................. 81 First-Team all-America....................................... 153 List By School.................................................. 157 Coaches............................................................... 175 – 3 – FBF Initial Pages 2/22/02 10:33 AM Page 4 Foreword Are you the definitive college football fan? How much do you know about its history? Do you remember the legendary names like Baugh, Berwanger, Blanchard, Brown, Davis, Grange, Harmon, Kinnick, Layne, Lujack, Nagurski, O'Brien, Thorpe, Trippi and Walker? If you are in the baby boomer generation, do you know the names Aikman, Allen, Bosco, Campbell, Cappelletti, Detmer, Dorsett, Elway, Faulk, Flutie, Griffin, Manning, Marino, McMahon, Montana, Rice, Rozier, Sanders, Walker and Young? How about nicknames like Whizzer, Mr. Inside, Mr. Outside, Bambi, Reds, Slingin' Sammy, The Lonesome End, Hopalong, Red, Dixie, Rocket, Choo-Choo, T. D., Preacher, Froggie and The Four Horsemen? College football, which began its 133rd season in 2001, is woven throughout the fabric of American life. Many college football fans can remember the names and nicknames listed above because those players were a part of their lives. Many modern football fans recall today's players with the same fondness. Because of the connection that stretches beyond the boundaries of time, we have assembled a collection of some of the finest college football players into two sections — prior to 1970 and after 1970. There is also a coaches' section detail- ing the careers of some of greatest mentors the game has known. You, as a college football fan, have undoubtedly read about or even met many "former all-America" football players. But how many of them actually were first- team selections on a team or teams composed primarily of major-college or Division I-A players and chosen with national input for national distribution? "NCAA Football's Finest" answers that question in terms of NCAA historical records. It lists the names, college by college, of all 2,868 players (from 156 col- leges) over 112 years who made at least one first team on the selections used by the NCAA to compile its annual consensus all-America team for major-college or Division I-A players. There were 1,535 consensus all-America players during that time and 364 of those were unanimous selections in at least one year of their playing career. Beginning in 1996, all-America and other outstanding players from divisions below Division I-A were included. Consensus and unanimous choices in the all-America roster are highlighted. They are all there — all the linemen and backs, offensive and defensive, iron-man or two-way — all the way back to the first all-America team in 1889. This book also features year-by-year statistics and honors won for the top run- ners, passers and receivers who brightened the game's first 132 years. Following the players are the coaches with .700-or-better winning percentages or at least 200 wins who were head coaches for at least 10 seasons at major or Division I-A colleges. Their yearly records and bowl scores are listed. The players are divided into two groups — those whose careers ended before 1970 and those whose collegiate playing days ended after 1970. This dividing line was chosen because through 1969, national statistics champions in the major categories were determined by total yards, points, completions, catches, etc., and most teams played 10-game schedules. In 1970, teams started playing 11-game schedules and the system was revamped to decide champions on a per-game basis. That change provided a perfect starting point for the "modern players" section. Another change came in 1979 with an efficiency rating to determine the annual passing champion. The efficiency rating combines completion percentage, yards per attempt, TD percentage and interception percentage; 100 points equaled the mark for the average major-college (now Division I-A) passer for the first 14 sea- – 4 – FBF Initial Pages 2/22/02 10:33 AM Page 5 sons of the current two-platoon era prior to 1979 (see the current NCAA Football Records for complete formula details and the graduated scale used to evaluate passers as the average efficiency rating rises year-by-year). In addition, freshman eligibility, 44-game careers, platoon play and passing rules changes make it almost impossible to fairly compare total yards by the mod- ern players to those by the old-timers who played both offense and defense in the iron-man era. More information will be provided about that later. First, here is some history about the all-America roster. The first 61 years of NCAA consensus choices were published in the 1950 NCAA Football Guide, pro- duced and distributed by the NCAA's service arm, the National Collegiate Athletic Bureau (NCAB). Selections were made at nightly meetings over a two-month span by a four- man NCAA panel. It included Homer F. Cooke Jr., director of the NCAB who had started the national football rankings as a private venture in 1937 in Seattle, where he was a sportswriter; H. D. Thoreau, general editor of the NCAA guides and noted track and field authority, who left the NCAB shortly thereafter to become Southern California sports information director; NCAB statistician Harvey Schiffer; and Steve Boda Jr., NCAA associate director of statistics before his retirement in 1989. As the youngest in the group, Boda did not vote on which all-America teams to use but recorded all the players and votes. The quartet's source material came largely from the vast college football collec- tion owned by Dr. Louis Henry Levy, then a retired New York physician and author who wrote about football under the name of Dr. L. H. Baker. The NCAB's Jack Waters, who retired in 1997 as the NCAA's director of licensing, prepared the manuscript. The story was written by Thoreau and credited to the collector. Dr. Levy's collection included 150,000 newspaper and magazine clippings, 30,000 books, and thousands of programs, pictures, catalogues and play dia- grams, all of it cross-indexed for ready reference. Even so, there were some tiny gaps. A few all-America teams the NCAB group wanted to use for its consensus teams were missing in a few seasons, so it simply did without. As many as 10 teams were used some years by the NCAB for its NCAA con- sensus teams. In May 1965, the NCAA adopted an official policy that teams used for the NCAA consensus teams shall not include those "based primarily on poten- tial as a professional player, or teams selected by representatives of professional football." Because of today's technology, the all-America teams utilized for the consensus teams are much easier to evaluate for the scope of their distribution. By 1975, only four teams were used — Associated Press, United Press International, Football Writers Association of America and American Football Coaches Association. In 1983, the Walter Camp Foundation was added and in 1993, the Sporting News and Football News teams were also added. Every name on the all-time list was cross-checked against his college's all- America list, all first-team claims were investigated and just one player was added. Certainly, one could argue that the very idea of trying to pick the best players is folly to begin with. But the public's fascination holds, and every fall, committees of writers and coaches devote serious study to it. Returning to the top players with yearly and career figures, they include all Heisman Trophy winners (the first one was chosen in 1935 — two years before official NCAA statistics began in 1937) and all but a few consensus all-America runners, passers and receivers since 1937. Some wartime figures are missing. A handful of consensus all-Americans are excluded because nearly all their career figures came in one season. In the book are 29 non-all-America players. They include quarterbacks who led their colleges to back-to-back national championships and others with outstanding numbers and/or top-10 finishes in Heisman Trophy balloting. Also included are a group of outstanding players from divisions other than Division I, who were taken from the College Football Hall of Fame classes, which began in 1996. For all old-timers before 1937, all figures were compiled by Boda, using only – 5 – FBF Initial Pages 2/22/02 10:33 AM Page 6 play-by-play reports he obtained in more than 100 trips from the NCAB office in New York to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., and from newspapers and historical societies across the country.