A century of Associated Press All-America college football teams features plenty of great teams, great players and a host of of head-scratching quirks, reflecting how the game itself has evolved over 100 years.

Let's start with the most important position: quarterback.

In 1925, when the first AP All-America team was named, the quarterback position did not loom nearly as large. The forward pass had only been legal since 1906 and the required number of yards for a first down had changed from 5 to 10 yards in 1912. The notion of throwing the ball was still in its infancy.

Of the 11 men on the 1925 team, three were listed as “backs” and one as a “running back.” It's not clear why Stanford's Ernie Nevers was labeled a running back.

For the first 45 years, with two exceptions, quarterbacks

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