In a CBS sports article, I read this sentence:
Alabama wrapped up its 10th national championship of the wire service era, winning its third national championship in four years with a 42-14 thrashing of No. 1 Notre Dame in the BCS title game.
There are a few definitions of "wire service" out there. For example,
wire service (noun): A news-gathering organization that distributes syndicated copy electronically, as by teletype or the Internet, usually to subscribers.
My estimation is that the wire service era coincides with the advent of some wire-based transfer of news, but I'm not sure which. The article references Alabama's 10th National Championship of the WSE, the first of which happened in 1961.
Is anyone familiar with this term, and, if so, could you shed some light on the timespan of the "wire service era"?