NCAA College Football

College football refers to American football played by teams of student athletes fielded by American universities, colleges and military academies. It was through college play that American football first gained popularity in the United States.

History

Football has been an intercollegiate sport for more than 130 years, but modern fans would scarcely recognize the game as played in the first contest on November 6, 1869, at New Brunswick, New Jersey. On that day Princeton and Rutgers, using a soccer-style round ball, played on a huge field (120 yards long and 75 yards wide) with 25 players on each side--and no officials. Rutgers scored 6 goals to the visitors' 4, after which the teams had dinner together. Princeton issued a challenge for a return match on its field and a week later (using Princeton's slightly different rules) got revenge by blanking Rutgers 8 goals to 0, then entertained the visitors with dinner accompanied by speeches and songs.

The sport grew slowly at first with Columbia, Yale, Harvard, and Stevens Tech fielding teams by 1875. In that year an egg-shaped, leather-covered rugby ball was adopted for play and normal procedure was to have three officials on hand: a judge from each team plus a referee to settle disputes.

In 1876 a crossbar was added to the goal posts at a height of 10 feet (in effect to the present day), and the field was reduced to nearly modern dimensions. At the same time the number of players on each side was lowered to 15.

Still, the sport did not really begin to resemble the modern game until former Yale player Walter Camp revised the rules in the early 1880s. Camp's 1880 revisions limited players to 11 on a side and established a scrimmage system for putting the ball in play. Two years later he instituted a system of downs for advancing the ball, requiring a team to make 5 yards in 3 downs (the current system of 4 downs to make 10 yards was not adopted until 1912). The first-down rule of 1882 required the marking of yard lines on the field and led to the term gridiron. It also inspired the first planned play strategy and verbal signals. With these changes the game spread more rapidly, and some 250 colleges were participating by the beginning of the twentieth century.

Bowl Games

Unlike most other sports—collegiate or professional—the Football Bowl Subdivision, formerly known as Division I-A college football, does not employ a playoff system to determine a champion. Instead, it has a series of "bowl games." The annual national champion is determined by a vote of sports writers and other non-players. This system has been challenged but little headway has been made given the entrenched vested economic interests in the various bowls.

A bowl game is a post-season college football game, typically in the Division I Bowl Subdivision. The first bowl game was the 1902 Rose Bowl, played between Michigan and Stanford; Michigan won 49-0. It ended when Stanford requested and Michigan agreed to end it with 8 minutes on the clock. That game was so lopsided that the game was not played annually until 1916, when the Tournament of Roses decided to reattempt the postseason game. The term "bowl" originates from the shape of the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, California, which was built in 1923 and looked like a bowl. This is where the name came in to use, as it became known as the Rose Bowl Game. Other games came along and used the term "bowl", whether the stadium was shaped like a bowl or not.

At the Division I FBS level, teams must earn the right to be bowl eligible by winning at least 6 games during the season. They are then invited to a bowl game based on their conference ranking and the tie-ins that the conference has to each bowl game. For the 2009 season, there were 34 bowl games, so 68 of the 120 Division I FBS teams were invited to play at a bowl. These games are played from mid-December to early January and most of the later bowl games are typically considered more prestigious.

After the Bowl Championship Series, additional all-star bowl games round out the post-season schedule through the beginning of February.

Bowl Championship Series (BCS)

The Bowl Championship Series (BCS) is designed to pair the top two teams in college football against each other for a National Championship game. The system also selects matchups for the other prestigious BCS bowl games. The ten teams selected include the conference champion from each of the six BCS conferences plus four others ("at-large" selections). The top-ranked and second-ranked teams are pitted in the BCS National Championship Game in order to crown an unofficial NCAA Division I FBS national football champion. The winner is also required to be voted number one by the Coaches Poll, however the AP Poll remains free to crown a different team as national champion and thereby create a split championship. It has been in place since the 1998 season. Prior to the 2006 season eight teams competed in four BCS Bowls. The BCS replaced the Bowl Alliance (in place from 1995–1997), which followed the Bowl Coalition (in place from 1992–1994).

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