College football is celebrating its 150th year of existence. It’s easy to shrug that off until you think that it began just five years after the Civil War ended. Lincoln was only four years dead. Reconstruction was underway. Still alive and composing were Wagner, Verdi, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, and several Strauss'. Yet to be president were Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Cleveland, and Teddy. The Great Depression was still sixty years away. 

It boggles.