Ramblings from the Ultimate Sports Sentimentalist

Those of you who began reading my blog last fall will remember the CFRA poll that was published every week on this site and then was eventually moved to its own site: www.cfrapoll.com.   I’d like to announce that the poll will be returning for its second season and hopefully will gain even greater notoriety across sporting nation. 

The College Football Researchers Association was originally founded by the late Anthony Cusher of Reeder, North Dakota in 1982.  It was an organization modeled after the Professional Football Researchers Association (PFRA) consisting of college football fans and writers dedicated to researching and analyzing the history of the game.  The CFRA retrospectively elected national champions from the years of 1919-1981 based on a poll created by Harry Carson Frye and also voted on present-day national champions during the years of 1982-1992.  They published their results in a monthly bulletin produced by Robert Kirlin of Spokane, Washington until after the ’92 season when the association ceased operations and several successor organizations, operating under different names, were created.

Last September, under the coordination of myself and others and with the permission and involvement of past members, the College Football Researchers Association was reorganized, and a group of both new and original CFRA voters was assembled to recreate this influential poll.  Basically, the CFRA poll functions like any other weekly college football poll with each of its voters submitting a top 25 ballot after each Saturday’s games.  The polls are then posted each Monday morning on our organization’s website: www.cfrapoll.com.  This poll gained a lot popularity and participation throughout the 2009 season, as we even had a press release about our national championship selection published by the IFRA and other college football publications.

 Now, we are looking to further expand the poll by adding other avid college football fans who would like to participate.  If you would like to become a CFRA voter, please e-mail me at bmatthews85@gmail.com and I will get you put on our mailing list and give you information on how to submit your weekly poll.  It would also be great if you could provide me with your name, location, and brief description of your college football interests and involvement so that I know a little bit about each of the voters.  We will probably allow for new voters to join throughout the first few weeks of the season, but there will be a deadline about when additional participants can be added.