When it comes to college football history, few books are more essential than Allison Danzig’s 1956 masterpiece, “The History of American Football: Its Great Teams, Players, and Coaches.”
This is not just a history; for decades, it was the definitive history.
Allison Danzig was one of the giants of 20th-century sportswriting. While he earned his greatest fame covering tennis for The New York Times, he was also a devoted and brilliant chronicler of college football. This book was, at the time, the most ambitious and comprehensive account of the sport ever attempted.
What makes Danzig’s work truly monumental and timeless isn’t just its scope—which is massive, tracing the game from its rugby origins through the 1955 season. Its true genius lies in its sourcing. Danzig was not a historian looking back from a great distance; he was a contemporary of the game’s founding fathers.
He didn’t just read about legends like Amos Alonzo Stagg, Pop Warner, or Grantland Rice—he knew them. He corresponded with them personally. The book is filled with firsthand commentary and direct quotes from the very men who invented the game, debated its rules, and engineered its first great dynasties. This primary-source access gives the text an authority and intimacy that can never be replicated.
The book is meticulously structured, with Part One detailing the “Evolution of the Game” (covering critical rule changes like the scrimmage and the forward pass) and Part Two providing “Year-by-Year Highlights.” With a foreword by legendary Army coach Earl “Red” Blaik, Danzig’s work was hailed upon its release as the best book ever published on football. Nearly 70 years later, that assessment still holds. For any serious student of the game, The History of American Football is the cornerstone of your library.
