College-Football Facts

The Goodyear Blimp has floated over college football since the 1955 Rose Bowl. Over the 64 years that followed, it covered more than 2,000 games. In January 2019, the College Football Hall of Fame gave it an honorary induction. More than 1,300 people are enshrined there. The blimp is still the only member who isn't human. Fans still watch the sky to see if a game is a big one.

The Heisman Trophy is the bronze statue college football hands its best player every year. The face on it is a forgotten NYU fullback. In 1934, sculptor Frank Eliscu asked his old classmate Ed Smith to pose for a project. Smith never asked what it was for. He played two pro seasons, then fixed elevators for a living. Forty-eight years later, a researcher called: your face is on the Heisman. In 1985 they handed him his own.

Reveille, Texas A&M's collie mascot, outranks every cadet on campus. She holds the rank of Cadet General, with five diamonds - the Corps Commander only wears four. It started in 1931, when cadets hit a stray dog near Navasota and hid her in the dorm. She barked at the bugler's reveille call the next morning, and the name stuck. The rule stands: if she falls asleep on a cadet's bed, that cadet sleeps on the floor.

At every Iowa Hawkeyes home game, nearly 70,000 fans turn their backs on the football field. They face the Children's Hospital next door and wave up at sick kids watching from the windows. Players, coaches, and even the other team join in. It all started from one mom's Facebook comment.

Every October, Texas and Oklahoma play their biggest football rivalry at a state fair. Carnival rides spin outside the Cotton Bowl in Dallas. More than 92,000 fans pack the stands. Tickets split 50-50 at the 50-yard line. Oklahoma's crimson fills one side, Texas's burnt orange fills the other. Locked in at the fair through 2036. Half crimson, half orange, every October.

The football huddle is credited to one deaf quarterback hiding his hands. In 1894, Gallaudet played a game against another deaf team. Quarterback Paul Hubbard called plays in sign language, open for anyone to read. So he had his teammates circle up tight before every snap. That circle became the huddle, copied by teams everywhere. Teams still huddle up today, from Friday night lights to the NFL, 132 years later.