What If? A Closer Look at College Football's Great Questions

I worked at SBNation from 2014-2020, running their college team site programming and regularly writing for SBNation.com. While I wrote a lot about the games on the field, I also regularly covered business stories, history and conference realignment…the stories that piqued my interest and eventually lead me to found Extra Points.

But writing about Big 12 expansion and TV markets and legal developments also made me deeply curious about college football history. The more I covered that beat, the more I realized that so many of the biggest debates we have today aren’t new.

Digging into previous realignment debates, coaching searches, legal battles and more led me down so many massive rabbit holes that they couldn’t possibly fit into one or two blog posts.

So in 2017, I turned them into a book. It’s called What If? A closer look at college football’s great questions:

What If? incisively yet irreverently examines the history of college football’s big decisions, from the Airplane Conference to Chicago’s Big Ten departure, sharing many stories and pointing out the merits and drawbacks of pivotal decisions along the way. The book examines the following scenarios:

What if Michigan never rejoined the Big Ten?
What if Chicago stayed in the Big Ten?
What if Maryland kept Bear Bryant?
What if Tulane and Georgia Tech never left the SEC?
What if the PCC became the Airplane Conference?
What if Penn was allowed to keep their TV deal?
What if Nebraska never hired Bob Devaney?
What if Arizona State lost the 1975 Fiesta Bowl?
What if LaVell Edwards left BYU?
What if Howard Schnellenberger stayed at Miami?
What if the Metro Conference became the first superconference?
What if West Virginia beat Pitt in 2007?
What if UAB hired Jimbo Fisher?

Each chapter is full of deep historical research, expert interviews, and takes you on a ride through college football’s crazy and complicated history.

You can still buy the paperback on Amazon, but I’d love to share a free ebook version with all of our premium subscribers. Click below to upgrade to any paid membership or log-in if you’re already a premium subscriber to download the ebook.

It’s tricky to find time to write more books while I’m also writing four newsletters a week, but I think I have at least one more book left in me. If you’d like to chat about other book topics you’d love to read about (what if or otherwise), drop me a line at [email protected].

Download the ebook below:

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