Today's Tidbit... Changes In The College Football Landscape Since 1954

I’ve previously looked at how the mix of teams playing college football at its highest level has changed over the years, yet when I find a document that illustrates those changes in a new (or old) way, I’m compelled to share it. This time around, we’re looking at parts of a 1954 composite football schedule used as a premium or giveaway by SWS Chevrolet, “your convenient downtown Chevrolet dealer for 32 years” in Dayton. Their tagline tells us the dealership was founded in 1922, so it was nearly as old as the NFL and opened the same year Red Grange first took the field for Illinois’ varsity.

Styles may change, but beautiful covers are forever.

The giveaway included the 1954 schedules for 117 college teams in its national schedules section. Across eight pages, it provided the school name, team nicknames, location, head coach, and the scores of the 1953 games for opponents remaining on the schedule. How they chose the 117 schools is unclear, but we’ll look at the schedules to see what has changed in the last 69 years.