Until the advent of television, college football was far more popular than its professional counterpart. From the late nineteenth century onward, many of the games greatest moments occurred on the collegiate gridiron. Well before the epochal feats of Jim Brown, Gale Sayers, Joe Willie Namath, and Joe Montana were being relayed by television transmission, sport-writers and radio broadcasters had immortalized Jim Thorpe, Knute Rockne, Red Grange.

Employed as initiation rites beginning in the early nineteenth century, the first college games proved disorderly and were outlawed by university officialdom. After the Civil War, two versions of football appeared at northeastern schools, one resembling soccer, with the picking up of the ball prohibited. On November 6, 1869, approximately 200 spectators watched Princeton and Rutgers battle in New Brunswick, New Jersey. With 25 players on each side, kicking prevailed as Rutgers triumphed 6-4. Another brand of football, similar to rugby, which allowed for...