Seeking college football research insight

writestuff1 · Aug 5, 2009

I'm doing research on various college coaches and football programs from the 1920-1940. The research includes quite a few schools that have not fielded teams for many years. Since those schools don't produce media guides, it's hard to find basic info such as game-by-game scores or coaching records online. I was curious as to what university libraries are known for having an extensive collection of newspapers on microfilm from around the country - not just papers from places like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Are there any libraries or perhaps research organizations that may have extensive student newspapers or university yearbooks on hand? Any insight would be greatly appreciated.

buckweaver · Aug 5, 2009

If you don't want to go with Proquest -- which, as you noted, is LAT-ChiTrib-WaPo-NYT-centric -- your best bet for smaller papers is newspaperarchive.com.

If you want to go through the actual microfilm instead of the 'Net, the University of Georgia's collection of reels from around the country is especially impressive, in my experience.

PM me for more details, because I can probably point you in a better direction if I know which teams/schools you're interested in. A lot of this type of research is best handled through local sources, as you probably already know.

share24 · Aug 5, 2009

This site might help:

http://www.cfbdatawarehouse.com

Armchair_QB · Aug 6, 2009

You might want to call the College Football Hall of Fame also. If they don't have the info you're looking for they may know who does.

Jim Jenks · Aug 6, 2009

Michael MacCambridge is your guy. He was the editor of the College Football Encyclopedia and has been researching it for years. I worked with him in the infancy of that project when I was at ESPN as director of research. If you contact the ESPN research department, they should be able to help you with contact info. Good luck.

Brian Cook · Aug 6, 2009

If you're just looking for scores, James Howell...
http://www.jhowell.net/cf/scores/ScoresIndex.htm

And Harold Stassen...
http://football.stassen.com/

are as comprehensive as it gets.