re: What do you consider to be the "modern era" of college football?

It's a very hard question to answer. Really depends on your definition of "modern" though. Hence the reason for so many different answers given so far.

Personally, I would put it somewhere near the end of the 80's or start of the 90's. Up until then, most of college football was allergic to the forward pass. The game, the players, even the national coverage have changed dramatically since then. If I had to pin down a certain year for me, I would go with 1992. Major changes to conferences (ACC and SEC), addition of conference championship games, and start of the BCS era. College football really took off from being a regional sport with a few pockets of intense interest, to nationwide entity behind only the NFL.

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Um.....

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Everyone knows that the AP poll is all that matters, right?

With the increased use of the forward pass in the mid 1930s

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Everyone knows that the AP poll is all that matters, right?

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Not during the BCS.

But I guess if your team embarrassed the conference in the only BCS bowl they ever played in, you'd like to forget about it.

sabes que before the pass the game was run up the middle, run right, run left that is it.

The flying wing had been outlawed before 1900, but you still saw teams using even into the late 1890;s and some into the early 1900's by designed play to stack a side of the play. The flying wing is the main play that was causing the deaths in the early game.

Without the change to open the field up, the game was on it's way to being outlawed. Go read up a little more on the history of football before posting.

Look at the photographs of the players lined up on the field and everyone is stacked up on a huge field all in place to run block in a limited area.

I am a football historian and one of the few that works on the era of 1880's-1920's football and writing a book on 1908 football and the change of the game by passing.

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The 85 scholarship limit.

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This is the real answer

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I look at as LSU was shite before 2000.

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same number of nation championships pre 2000

post 2000?

not close

Two choices:

1) The end of one-platoon football in the early/mid 60s. Playing both ways put a premium on conditioning and athleticism vs. size and strength. No 350 lb linemen.

2) Advent of ESPN and the Interwebs. The TV money and 24/7/365 publicity has completely changed the game from what is was before. For the worse, IMHO.

When Mizzou & A&M joined the SEC