Syracuse University Football (Images of Sports Series)

It began with a 36-0 loss to the University of Rochester on November 23, 1889, but that humbling debut proved to be an aberration rather than an omen for Syracuse University football. The Orangemen have since established themselves as the eleventh winningest team in college football history, and more than two hundred of their players have gone on to play professionally. Their legendary success is celebrated in Syracuse University Football.

The Orangemen have participated in more than twenty bowl games. In 1959, they went 11-0 under Hall of Fame coach Ben Schwartzwalder and won the national championship. Through the years, Syracuse has produced numerous stars, such as Heisman Trophy winner Ernie Davis, and more than forty other All-Americans and a dozen College Football Hall of Fame inductees. Along with Jim Brown and Floyd Little, Davis helped make No. 44 one of football's most famous jerseys, not to mention a permanent part of the university's zip code. Syracuse University Football documents this outstanding program with nearly two hundred photographs.

Scott Pitoniak, an award-winning columnist and author, tells the story of Syracuse football in this wide-ranging pictorial history. He has written about the Orangemen since his undergraduate days at Syracuse in the mid-1970s. Winner of more than ninety national and regional journalism awards, Pitoniak has been inducted into two halls of fame and named one of the nation's top ten sports columnists by the Associated Press Sports Editors. He writes for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.