“Now the pigskin zings through the air and our scouts have returned with their findings. They criss-crossed thousands of miles of college high-ways. They took in scores and scores of football camps, watched the faces of hundreds of coaches and the gyrations of fifty times that many grid-men. They’re not easily impressed, these old, wise football judges, but this is what they predict: ‘This year’s crop will top the field. This is one of the highest-powered bunch of leather handlers that ever came along!’”
This explosive prose opened Football Illustrated’s 1936 Annual, which painstakingly covered collegiate ball across the country throughout the season long before the game was televised nationally.