College Football: The Big Five

Who plays the best college football in the U.S.? Why, the East, of course. It may come as a shock, but there it is. First, disregard the effete East, otherwise known as the Fight Fiercelies—the Ivy League, the Yankee Conference, the Middle Atlantic Conference. Concentrate on the Big Five: Army, Navy, Pitt, Penn State and Syracuse. No rep-tie types these—coal miners' sons from Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey farmers, shave-skull cadets. The Big Five are technically independents, but they are linked together just as any conference is—by bands of mutual geography...