Ramblings from the Ultimate Sports Sentimentalist

College football fans get ready because one of the nation’s most historic college football polls is in the process of retrospectively electing national champions from the years 1993-2008.  All the debate and controversy from those college football seasons is about to return, and the College Football Researchers Association is going to settle the score once and for all.

The reason for this project is simple.  The College Football Researchers Association poll was originally founded in 1982 and was in existence until 1992.  They not only published a current poll during that time period but also retrospectively elected national champions from the years of 1869-1981.  However, after the 1992 season, the association ceased operations and did not re-emerge until last fall.  As a result, there are a series of years (1993-2008) for which the organization never elected a champion.  Now, the CFRA is in the process of voting on national champions from each of these seasons.  Each champ will be announced on the organization’s website ( www.cfrapoll.com ) starting on December 26th.  From then until the title game, a different national champion will be crowned each day. 

For those of you who are not familiar with the CFRA, let me provide you with a brief history: 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. 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 several 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.

This poll gained a lot popularity throughout the 2009 season, and the NCAA acknowledged the re-emergence of it this past summer on page 68 of the 2010 NCAA Football Record Book:  http://web1.ncaa.org/web_files/stats/football_records/DI/2010/2010FBS.pdf  You can also see from the chart immediately above the poll that the CFRA is currently one of the only seventeen active polls officially acknowledged by the NCAA.  Furthermore, because of the predated national champions which the original CFRA elected, there are only five national polls that have elected more national champions than this organization has. 

I hope you are looking forward to the crowning of these past champions.  Please feel free to debate the results of each poll as they are posted on this blog starting on December 26th.

For a full list of past CFRA champions, please go here:  http://cfrapoll.com/2010/01/13/past-cfra-winners/