The Unanimous Champions of College Football 1869 - 2019
By Robert J. Reid More than once, wandering through this incredibly rich volume, I paused, looked up, and thought: "He's actually writing this in a way I can understand!" And that may be the very best testimonial I can give to Robert Reid's dedicated exploration of a question he posed himself way back in 2005 when he first began to write: "Why were so few teams, in the history of the sport, unanimously chosen as the national champion college team?" He acknowledges that in part, it was because it took years for a national championship format to be established. "During the 150 years in question, what were the major criteria necessary for a team to be a unanimous national champion?" Was there a single criteria that would easily result in a unanimous selection, or perhaps a set of them? He reminds us that in 150 years, the sport has evolved both with "a snail's crawl and a cheetah's speed." Rules were changing and the style of play wa
