Steve Boda Big Ten Football Research Index Cards

Collection

Identifier: MSSP_10052

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Content Description

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Statistical summaries of football games involving Big Ten conference schools created by NCAA statistician Steve Boda. Each 8" x 5" index cards lists individual and team statistics for specific games—conference and non-conference games—including rushing, passing, and scoring stats. The cards also record additional information like attendance and weather information. The collection includes statistical game summary cards for the 1933, 1934, and 1935 seasons and then each season between 1941 and 1986. The collection also includes index cards with schedules and results for Big Ten teams from 1933-1985; index cards with season individual rushing and passing statistics for Big Ten teams from 1961-1978; index cards with lists of Boda's research needs; bowl game results; and other topics. At some point it appears that portions of the collection were lost. Game summary cards for Big Ten games between 1935 and 1940 are not present; and the bowl game results cards only include information about six different bowl games. The collection documents Boda's efforts to record and calculate college football statistics during the analog era of the mid-twentieth century. Formats include index cards.

Dates

Creation: 1933-1986

Creator

Boda, Steve, 1923- (Person)

Conditions Governing Access

There are no access restrictions on this collection.

Conditions Governing Use

Copyright status for collection materials is unknown. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by U.S. Copyright Law (Title 17, U.S.C.) beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owners. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user.

Biographical / Historical

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Steve Boda (1923-2014) was a football historian and a long-time statistican for the NCAA. Born in South Bend, he attended his first football game at Notre Dame Stadium in 1930. From the beginning, he enjoyed charting plays and recording statistics, and his hobby eventually developed into a career. After graduating from Indiana University in 1949, Boda was hired by the National Collegiate Athletic Bureau (NCAB), the first official statisticians for the NCAA. Ten years later, the NCAA took over the operation of the NCAB, and Boda remained with the NCAA Statistics Bureau until his retirement in 1989. He compiled the first NCAA Football Record Book in 1969, and he received the Arch Ward Award from the College Sports Information Directors of America in 1990 for "outstanding contributions to the field of athletic communications." Throughout his life, Boda researched, recorded, and reconstructed football statistics as a hobby in his spare time, in addition to his job at the NCAA. Boda died at the age of 90 in 2014.

++++ Source:

Mark Fitzpatrick, "Steve Boda: The ultimate Notre Dame football historian," Strong of Heart, University of Notre Dame, 2010: https://strongofheart.nd.edu/profiles/steve-boda-2010/