Our section was published Sept. 1 but our first meeting on it took place around Feb. 1. The idea was to tell our readers why we love college football so much, and we figured we needed 7-8 months to track down everyone we wanted to appear in the section.

Our college football writer, Bob Asmussen, got all 119 Division I-A head coaches to tell us why they love college football. Arm-twisting was required in some cases, but mostly coaches were cooperative since we were getting them during their down time.

To illustrate our theme, Asmussen, photo editor Darrell Hoemann and myself attended the Big Ten's media event in Chicago where we were able to convince all 11 coaches to pose for our cameras in between meetings at the Hyatt Regency. The SIDs were a bit skeptical, but the coaches had fun with it. Michigan State's John L. Smith waved a foam finger. Purdue's Joe Tiller signaled touchdown. Indiana's Terry Hoeppner slipped on a T-shirt over his tie that read "I Love College Football" (we let him keep it). Lloyd Carr raised a Michigan helmet and Jim Tressel slapped Buckeye stickers on an Ohio State helmet.

We asked Joe Paterno to kiss a football – that was our original cover idea – but he politely declined. 'I don't do cornball,' he said.

When Illinois played Big Ten schools in the fall, we presented each coach with a color reprint of their pose and a couple copies of the section. It really was an enjoyable process, one we're hoping to repeat this fall (and one we've already begun planning).

— Jim Rossow

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