American Football

Between 20 and 30 million people play fantasy football each year. Now, Fantasy Football: The Next Level goes beyond stats and projections to teach readers a proven approach to drafting and managing a team that succeeds - in any league. Dorey's wealth of tips, tools and techniques - based on two decades of fantasy football expertise - will help experienced players and newcomers alike win their championships every season.

Jim Thorpe was one of the greatest athletes who ever lived. He played professional football, major league baseball, and won Olympic gold medals in track and field. But his life wasn't an easy one. Born on the Sac and Fox Reservation in 1887, he encountered much family tragedy, and was sent as a young boy to various Indian boarding schools: strict, cold institutions that didn't allow their students to hold on to their Native American languages and traditions.

Football has been around for more than 100 years. It has had its fair share of controversies. Concussions are just the most recent of those. We wanted to show that the league of today is safer than it has ever been, and it is continuing to improve. We also wanted to show that the we didn't get to where we are overnight, and we won't fix the problems overnight either. We give a history of the sport, the evolution onto television, explain the concussion threat, and even show some ways it can be solved.

In Against Football Steve Almond details why, after 40 years as a fan, he can no longer watch the game he still loves. Using a synthesis of memoir, reportage, and cultural critique, Almond asks a series of provocative questions: Does our addiction to football foster a tolerance for violence, greed, racism, and homophobia? What does it mean that our society has transmuted the intuitive physical joys of childhood--run, leap, throw, tackle--into a billion-dollar industry?

In Mavericks, Money and Men, football historian Charles Ross chronicles the AFL's key events, including Buck Buchanan becoming the first overall draft pick in 1963, and the 1965 boycott led by black players who refused to play in the AFL All Star game after experiencing blatant racism. He also recounts how the success of the AFL forced a merger with the NFL in 1969, which arguably facilitated the evolution of modern professional football.

For more than a century, no number one and number two high school football team had ever met—until October 6, 2001. This is the story of two teams—Concord De La Salle, a private Catholic school in an upscale Northern California suburb, and Long Beach Poly, a proud public institution from a blue-collar SoCal seaport—striving to achieve the same goal: the all-American dream.

When Scott Murphy scored the winning touchdown in the 1991 state championship game, it should have launched a golden future - the full scholarship to Ohio State, the million-dollar signing bonus, marriage to the beauty queen, and NFL glory. Instead, it all ended with a sickening pop as his leg shattered in four places. The next twenty years would be a study in Murphy's Law-whatever could go wrong did. Just when things seem at their worst-he's losing his farm, his relationship with his wife is crumbling - a miracle happens: Murphy gets a chance to reboot his life.

The loamy black "muck" that surrounds Belle Glade, Florida once built an empire for Big Sugar and provided much of the nation's vegetables, often on the backs of roving, destitute migrants. Many of these were children who honed their skills along the field rows and started one of the most legendary football programs in America. Belle Glade's high school team, the Glades Central Raiders, has sent an extraordinary number of players to the National Football League - 27 since 1985, with five of those drafted in the first round.

In From Sandlots to the Super Bowl, Craig R. Coenen recounts the NFL's ascension from a cash-strapped laughingstock to a perennial autumn obsession for millions of sports fans. It offers an in-depth summary of the NFL's early years and its struggles to build an identity. This book approaches the history of the National Football League not only with stats and scores but with what happened beyond the gridiron.

As Don Shula and Johnny Unitas elevated the brutal game of football, the world around them clashed about Vietnam, civil rights, and sex. Collision of Wills looks at the complicated relationship between Don Shula, the league's winningest coach of all time, and his star player Johnny Unitas, and how their secret animosity fueled the Colts in an era when their losses were as memorable as their victories.

On November 23, 1968, near the end of a turbulent and memorable year, there was a football game that would also prove turbulent and memorable: the season-ending clash between Harvard and Yale. Both teams entered undefeated and, technically at least, came out undefeated. The final score was 29-29. To some of the players on the field, it was a triumph; to others a tragedy. George Howe Colt’s The Game is the story of that iconic American year, as seen through the young men who lived it and were changed by it.

In commemoration of the 50th anniversary of America's most beloved sporting event - the Super Bowl - an authoritative collection of the most pivotal plays through the decades, compiled by the legendary Jerry Rice.

Francis Benali is a Southampton Football Club legend and a celebrated charity endurance athlete, and he's ready to tell his story. Francis 'Franny' Benali played football for 20 years for Southampton FC in nearly 400 games, almost his entire career. His utter dedication to the club caused him to be a hero to Saints fans around the world.

In between Babe Ruth and Michael Jordan there was Joe Namath, one of the very few sports heroes who transcended their game. The son of a Hungarian immigrant, Namath left the steel country of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, for the Deep South, where he played quarterback for Bear Bryant at the University of Alabama. Almost four years later, he signed a $427,000 contract with the New York Jets that changed football forever, transforming a crude, violent game into show business.

On December 28, 1958, the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts met under the lights of Yankee Stadium for that season's NFL Championship game. Football was still greatly over-shadowed by the country's favored pastime - baseball - but the 1958 championship proved to be the turning point for pro football.

On the field and roaming the sidelines were 17 future Hall of Famers, including Colts stars Johnny Unitas, Raymond Berry, and Gino Marchetti, and Giants greats Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, and assistant coaches Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry.

The Best Game Ever is a brilliant portrait of how a single game changed the history of American sports.

For 11 players on the Auburn University football team, the road to the 2011 BCS National Football Championship began among the poorest of the poor outside Puerta Plata, Dominican Republic. Team chaplain Chette Williams led those young men on a mission trip that opened their eyes to the desperate needs of others. The players spent time among children who were living on the streets and finding their next meal at the garbage dump on the outskirts of town.

At the age of eight, Chad Gibbs attended his first Southeastern Conference football game. Since then he has been in a constant battle to not let his love of all things pigskin consume him. As a Christian, Gibbs knows he cannot serve two masters, but at times his faith is overwhelmed by his fanaticism. He is not alone. In 2008 over six million people attended an SEC football game.

NFL Brawler is a raucous first-person account of an NFL under siege by the game's first player turned agent, Ralph Cindrich, the original "Blind Side" agent. This entertaining pro football memoir takes listeners behind the scenes of the game's most important and outrageous drafts, deals, and trades; takes on NFL scandals by telling it like it is; and takes listeners closer to the real action of the sport - from locker rooms to boardrooms and into the worlds of agents and players - than any book to date.

Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry could not have had two more divergent personalities. Yet, while working for the New York Giants of the mid-to-late ’50s under head coach Jim Lee Howell, the pair formed what stands, to this day, as the greatest set of coordinators on one team. Given their personalities, one might have likened Howell’s job to that of Dwight Eisenhower as the general struggled to control the egos and politics of his allied subordinates during WWII. But for some reason, Lombardi and Landry worked almost seamlessly, and as a result, the Giants rose to the top of the NFL.

Alan Curbishley has spent a lifetime in football as a fan, player and manager. In his 40 years, he has seen the game he loves change beyond all recognition. The money, the media, the celebrity culture, the agents - when Curbishley began his playing career in 1975, no one could have foreseen a future in which television rights sold for £10 billion. Through incredible access to the biggest names in the game, he takes a look at the modern game in all its guises, from the chairmen and chief executives at the very top to managers and players and all the way to the fans and ground staff.