American Football

During the 1980s, Black athletes and other athletes of color broadened the popularity and profitability of major college televised sports by infusing games with a "Black style" of play. At a moment ripe for a revolution in men's college basketball and football, clashes between "good guy" white protagonists and bombastic "bad boy" Black antagonists attracted new fans and spectators. And no two teams in the 1980s welcomed the enemy's role more than Georgetown Hoya basketball and Miami Hurricane football. The Hoyas and the 'Canes made the bad-boy image look good. Pop culture took notice.

Since 2015, Fred Segal has chronicled "unprophetic" sports predictions on the internet. His Freezing Cold Takes social media pages feature quotes and predictions from members of the sports world that have aged poorly or were, in hindsight, flat-out wrong. The pages have become a guilty pleasure for hundreds of thousands of sports fans who love to see sports media's infamous "hot takes" that went cold.

In his trademark tell-it-like-it-is style, Chris sets his sights on 25 aspects of the modern game that need fixing. From ridiculous rules and feckless agents to dreaded VAR and abusive fans, no subject is out of bounds. Discover which managers Sutton slams for giving bland post-match interviews, which clubs are fleecing their fans and why he believes Messi and Ronaldo aren't as good as Best and Maradona.

Acclaimed essayist Mark Edmundson reflects on his own rite of passage as a high school football player to get to larger truths about the ways America's Game shapes its men. Football teaches young men self-discipline and teamwork. But football celebrates violence. Football is a showcase for athletic beauty and physical excellence. But football damages young bodies and minds, sometimes permanently. Football inspires confidence and direction. But football instills cockiness, a false sense of superiority.

In Mad Ducks and Bears, George Plimpton's engaging companion to Paper Lion, Plimpton focuses on two of the most entertaining and roguish linemen and former teammates: Alex Karras ("Mad Ducks") and John Gordy ("Bears"), both of whom went on to achieve brilliant post-football success. A more reflective, less madcap audiobook than Plimpton's other work, Mad Ducks and Bears is no less truthful and searching.

Ezekiel Elliott - the star running back for the Dallas Cowboys - spent his 2016 rookie season running past, and sometimes over, his opponents. He led the National Football League (NFL) in rushing yards, helping his team enter the playoffs with the second-best regular season record in the NFL. With his impressive speed and strength, it looks like Elliott will continue to dominate the NFL for many years to come. Learn all about Elliott's path to the NFL, how he stays fit, how he developed his personal sense of style, and much more.

The heart of Friday Night Lights meets the emotional resonance and nostalgia of My So-Called Life in this moving debut novel about tradition, family, love, and football. As the high school football coach in his small, rural Maryland town, Dean is a hero who reorganized the athletic program...

On November 29, 1941, Army played Navy in front of 100,000 fans. Eight days later, the Japanese attacked, and the young men who battled each other in that historic game were forced to fight a very different enemy. Author Lars Anderson follows four players - two from Annapolis and two from West Point - in this epic true story. The tale of these men is woven into a dramatic narrative of football and war that's unlike any other.

This wide-ranging history synthesizes scholarship and media sources to give the listener an inside view of the television contracts, labor issues, and other off-the-field forces that shaped the National Football League. Historian Richard Crepeau shows how Commissioner Pete Rozelle's steady leadership guided the league's explosive growth during the era of Monday Night Football and the Super Bowl's transformation into a mid-winter spectacle.

With dreams of football on the horizon, a young and gifted high school athlete finds himself living through hell on earth and must, somehow, find the strength to overcome a formidable enemy bent on his destruction. Even before Jimbo entered adulthood, he had all the traits he learned in sports and from family to navigate the adversity thrown his way, but will he find the courage to trust his instincts to win a bigger game?

But that’s exactly what Marc was. Repeatedly bullied and overweight, Marc was an unpopular kid who turned pain into fuel to transform his body, train his mind, and change the course of his entire life. What started as self-defense became an unquenchable thirst for self-improvement from pre-dawn sprints at his high school track to living in a storage closet while training for the NFL draft. It took blood, sweat, sacrifice - and his mom’s heartfelt advice - for Marc to go from an insecure boy to a professional NFL athlete.

Wie schafft man es als deutscher American-Football-Spieler in die NFL? Die beeindruckende Geschichte von Sebastian Vollmer zeigt: Talent ist nur eine Voraussetzung. Genauso wichtig sind unbändiger Wille, Training und Liebe zum Sport. Damit lassen sich Hindernisse überwinden - wovon es in Vollmers Karriere einige gab: Sein erster Coach nannte ihn einen "kleinen Fisch in einem großen Teich". Vollmer biss sich durch und ergatterte 2003 ein Footballstipendium an einem US-College.

Revealing how an obscure young assistant coach, in less than a decade, progressed to become a head coach, general manager, league commissioner, and controlling partner of the Oakland Raiders franchise, this biography pays tribute to the late Al Davis. Contrary to Davis’s notoriously quirky and reclusive reputation, this account is based on the inside scoop he personally gave the author, lending his full cooperation to relate the account of his life and career.

In 1976, Vince Papale was a down-on-his-luck substitute teacher, part-time bartender, and season ticket holder for the Philadelphia Eagles, the team he'd grown up rooting for. He had always loved football, but the closest he'd ever come to playing on Sundays was in local rough touch leagues. Until fate stepped in. Vince was 30 years old and wondering what he would do with his life, when he heard that Coach Dick Vermeil was holding open tryouts for the Eagles.

He was a lovable rogue--a gambler, a billiards champion, a cardshark, a dance contest winner, a college student, and perhaps the finest all-around athlete the world has ever known. He was a maverick, a loner, his own man, almost reclusive, yet he was loved and admired by millions while he was alive and mourned nationwide after he died at the young age of 25.

Dave Meggyesy had been an outside linebacker with the St. Louis Cardinals for seven years when he quit at the height of his career to tell about the dehumanizing side of the game - about the fraud and the payoffs, the racism, drug abuse, and incredible violence. The original publication of Out of Their League shocked readers and provoked the outraged response that rocked the sports world in the 1970s.

What if your life hinged on a decision you had to make in a split second? That's the story of NFL referee Lance Easley. As a 'replacement referee' during 2012's referee lockout, Easley thought he'd earned his dream job - until he made a call that would profoundly change his life and career.

Football is at a crossroads, its future imperiled by the very physicality that drives its popularity. Its grass roots - high school and youth travel program - are withering. But players from the small South Pacific American territory of Samoa are bucking that trend, quietly becoming the most disproportionately overrepresented culture in the sport. But the very thing that makes them so good at football - their extraordinary internalization of discipline and warrior self-image - makes them especially vulnerable to its pitfalls, including concussions and brain injuries.

How Football Explains America is a fascinating, first-of-its-kind journey through the making of America's most complex, intriguing, and popular game. ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio explores just how crucial football is to understanding the American psyche. Paolantonio tackles varying American themes from Manifest Destiny to “fourth and one” as he goes deep in order to answer the age-old question: Why does America love football so much?

College sports have never been bigger. Once a roughneck intercollegiate pastime, football now commands millions of fans and generates massive revenues. New York Times investigative reporter Mike McIntire chronicles the rise in the popularity and power of college athletics, revealing deeply troubling relationships between college sports programs, the universities that host them, booster organizations, local police departments, and the courts.