"If you are a real student of college football this book is for you. There are so many facts crammed into it that only my offensive linemen could lift it!" Joe Gibbs, Head Coach, Washington...

"For more than a half century, television has played a primary role in securing college football's place as one of America's most popular spectator sports. But it has also been the common denominator in the sport's rise as a big business. Television, which multiplied the number of people who cared about the game, simultaneously increased the stakes." "The colleges, who once feared television's ability to create free tickets, gradually became addicted to its charms. Through the years, the medium manufactured money, greed, dependence, and envy; altered the recruiting process, eventually forcing the colleges to compete with the irresistible force of National Football League riches; aided the National Collegiate Athletic Association's explosion from impotent union to massive bureaucracy; manipulated the rise and fall of the College Football Association; fomented the realignment of conferences; and seized control of the post-season bowl games, including the formation of the lucrative and controversial Bowl Championship Series." "In The Fifty-Year Seduction, Keith Dunnavant shows how television helped shape the modern sport - on and off the field. In painstaking detail, the author chronicles five decades of tension and conflict, from the 1951 television dispute that empowered the modern NCAA to the inevitable backlash, culminating with the landmark Supreme Court decision that set the stage for the conference-swapping machinations of the 1990s and beyond."--BOOK JACKET.

In The Fifty-Year Seduction, Keith Dunnavant shows how television helped shape the modern sport--on and off the field. For more than a half century, television has played a primary role in securing college football's place as one of America's most popular spectator sports. But it has also been the common denominator in the sport's rise as a big business. Television, which multiplied the number of people who cared about the game, simultaneously increased the stakes. The colleges, who once feared television's ability to create free tickets, gradually became addicted to its charms. Through the years, the medium manufactured money, greed, dependence, and envy; altered the recruiting process, eventually forcing the colleges to compete with the irresistible force of National Football League riches; aided the National Collegiate Athletic Association's explosion from impotent union to massive bureaucracy; manipulated the rise and fall of the College Football Association; fomented the realignment of conferences; and seized control of the post-season bowl games, including the formation of the lucrative and controversial Bowl Championship Series. In painstaking detail, the author chronicles five decades of tension and conflict, from the 1951 television dispute that empowered the modern NCAA to the inevitable backlash, culminating with the landmark Supreme Court decision that set the stage for the conference-swapping machinations of the 1990s and beyond.

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.

No other high school in Nebraska evokes as much pride, passion, inspiration, and devotion as Pius X High School. The school that was started in 1956 and remains today Nebraska's largest co-educational parochial school, is a beacon for success and leadership. Thunderbolt athletics has been a bench mark for programs to follow, and only those privileged few student athletes who have had the opportunity to don the Pius X uniform can begin to understand why that is so. Pius X's undeniably rich tradition and success over the past fifty years are enough to separate it from other schools: 54 state titles in both boy and girl sports, 12 all sports awards, nine state football championships, and countless academic all state athletes. Coaches such as Aldrich, Kelley, Aylward, Moore, and Forycki, as well as many others, have set the standard of excellence, and have created the feelings of honor and utmost pride associated with Pius X and being a Thunderbolt. Travel back with us as we take a look at Past great athletes and teams and why they make Pius X such a special and magical place. This is a must read for all past and present Thunderbolt athletes, and for Pius X fans and foes alike. Now read the stories and accounts of past Pius X athletes as they attempt to define the significance of being a part of the storied tradition that is a Pius X Thunderbolt.