Books take closer look at college football

By Peter Centineo

Rapid City Weekly

When Tom R. Rudebusch and Edson A. Bearg began writing a book on the history of college football three years ago, they knew what they were getting into and embraced the challenge.
And after hundreds of hours spent compiling facts, writing and editing, they published “Inside the Program,” a history of college football which has two volumes. Volume 1 includes the early years of the game through the 1940s, and Volume 2 recollects the golden age of the game from the 1950s through today.

The books contain hundreds of college football program covers from all over the country. Some date back to the 1800s and the beginning of the college game. The books cover such topics as the early years of the game, great coaches, the war years of the 1940s, famous players, mascot madness, stadiums and great traditions and rivalries to name just a few.

And throughout the books are great visuals of the football programs that are quite interesting for every college football fan.

Rudebusch is the executive director of the South Dakota School of Mines Hardrocker Club. He also runs Hardrocker Marketing, which paid for the book’s publication. He said 80 percent of all proceeds from the books sales will go to the school’s athletic scholarship fund.

Rudebusch is most known for his play-by-play radio broadcasts for South Dakota Tech football and basketball games, as well as Post 22 baseball. The idea for the book came about five years ago when Rudebusch was in Arizona playing golf with co-author Bearg.

Bearg is a School of Mines alumni as well who wrote the history of Nebraska football nine years ago.

“Ed had a really good format when he did the book on Nebraska and we used the same kind of format for this book,” said Rudebusch. “Ed’s a pretty smart guy. He did most of the research except for a couple of chapters and I wrote the copy for it. We exchanged a lot of e-mails but we finally got it done this past spring.”

The hardest part about writing the book was deciding what to leave out and what to include.

“We were constantly editing it but after a while when we had most of it done that was it,” he said. “We felt we had everything pretty well covered.”

Most of the research for the books came from over 10,000 college football programs Bearg had collected over the years. Some 500 program covers were scanned into a computer and used in the books. The artwork these covers represent is quite amazing, as Bearg has one program from 1890.

Bearg worked for Armco Steel after graduating from college and worked his way up to vice president before retiring in 1986. He then bought a number of manufacturing businesses and was quite successful. But his love of college football was a constant, and during his business travels he would find old college football programs and add them to his collection.

“Most of the research came from these programs,” said Bearg, who lives in Scottsdale, Ariz. “They have a lot on the history of college football. I’d go into antique stores and find them. A lot of time I’d just walk into a college athletic department and see what they had.”

He still collects programs, and many times will write letters to different colleges asking for programs with a check for $5 included.

“The programs are really beautiful. A lot of great artists designed these covers and they are all quite unique,” he said. “When they got into the 1960s photographs were used a lot on covers instead of original paintings.”

Ernie Bearg, a relative of Ed Bearg’s, was the head coach of the University of Nebraska in the 1920s and he coached Nebraska to wins over Notre Dame and the Four Horsemen as well as Illinois and Red Grange.

“College football is really amazing. I go to all the Arizona State games,” said Bearg.

Rudebusch concurred.

“I’ve been around the college game for so long. There are a lot of small colleges like the School of Mines that don’t have a lot of scholarship money but the players play for the love of the game.”