The Sid Gillman Collection forms a portion of the Cradle of Coaches Archive and includes 18 playbooks, spanning the length of his professional career. These playbooks were the personal working copies of Gillman and contain extensive original hand notes, drawings, magazine clippings, and ideas written on slips of paper.

Most of the playbooks contain a “BOOK CONTENTS” page, which appears to be a recent addition (i.e., was not a part of the books during Gillman’s days). The playbooks in this collection are not ordered chronologically, nor do the numbers assigned to each playbook (e.g., Book #10) follow any logical order. These idiosyncrasies are maintained in this collection. Several playbooks are autographed by Sid Gillman across the front page in blue felt-tipped pen.

In addition to the playbooks, this collection includes biographical information about Gillman from several websites, a testimonial from a former colleague of Gillman’s, news clippings, and original reel-to-reel footage of the University of Cincinnati football team from the 1940s.