Brand NFL: Making and Selling America's Favorite Sport by
Professional football today is a $6 billion sports entertainment industry. In this astute field-level view of the National Football League since 1960, Michael Oriard looks closely at the development of the sport and at the image of the NFL and its unique place in American life. At the heart of this story is a question with no simple answer: has the extraordinary commercializing and "branding" of NFL football since the late 1980s ironically weakened the cultural power of a sport whose appeal for more than a century was fundamentally noncommercial? Oriard skillfully traces the evolution of the Super Bowl, the development of NFL Films and ESPN, the rise of the commissioner as corporate CEO, the management of player demands, changing attitudes toward race, and the roles of icons such as Vince Lombardi, Joe Namath, and Deion Sanders. As a former member of the Kansas City Chiefs (1970-1973) who lost his job at the end of the first players' strike, Oriard offers unique insight as both insider and historian. He details how the game is marketed as entertainment rather than sport, making the NFL ripe for popular consumption.
Complete Idiot's Guide to Football by 
Football Uncyclopedia: A Highly Opinionated Myth-Busting Guide to America's Most Popular Game by
With a blend of statistical analysis, opinion, love for the game, and a healthy dash of humor, authors Michael Kun and Adam Hoff challenge the myths and beliefs that have long afflicted football. No subject is off limits. The greatness of the 1972 Miami Dolphins? Skewered. America's Team? Put in its place. Pittsburgh's Berkowitz Fish Sandwich? Praised, obviously. Joe Namath? Well, he gets a little bit of everything. The Football Uncyclopedia gives equal time to owners and champions, stadiums and cities. It rushes to the defense of everyone from Shaun Alexander to Kurt Warner and of everything from the Heisman Trophy to Randall Cunningham's marble business. It focuses on player legacies, NFL history, and hot-button issues, but it also delves into topics like celebrity misbehavior, on-air kisses, and the film Ace Ventura: Pet Detective. The Football Uncyclopedia covers the names, the nuances, and everything in between that make football an enduring American phenomenon.
No Game for Boys to Play : The History of Youth Football and the Origins of a Public Health Crisis by
From the untimely deaths of young athletes to chronic disease among retired players, roiling debates over tackle football have profound implications for more than one million American boys—some as young as five years old—who play the sport every year. In this book, Kathleen Bachynski offers the first history of youth tackle football and debates over its safety. In the postwar United States, high school football was celebrated as a'moral'sport for young boys, one that promised and celebrated the creation of the honorable male citizen. Even so, Bachynski shows that throughout the twentieth century, coaches, sports equipment manufacturers, and even doctors were more concerned with'saving the game'than young boys'safety—even though injuries ranged from concussions and broken bones to paralysis and death. By exploring sport, masculinity, and citizenship, Bachynski uncovers the cultural priorities other than child health that made a collision sport the most popular high school game for American boys. These deep-rooted beliefs continue to shape the safety debate and the possible future of youth tackle football.
Professional Football by 
Real Football: Conversations on America's Game by
Starting Lineup: Dub Jones Greg Pruitt Bert Jones Clendon Thomas Ken Mendenhall Joe Washington, Sr. Tony Peters Joe Washington, Jr. Steve Zabel Since the 1960s, professional football has been America's most popular sport. This book explores the culture of football from the inside-from the players' perspective-the game the fans never see. Conversations are with eight top athletes, men who played in the National Football League for at least ten years, and with another who coached football for forty-five years. The players analyze the mental, physical and emotional experience of the game at the high school, college, and professional levels, and at nearly every gridiron position. The author chooses his subjects carefully and finds articulate interpreters of this hard-edged experience. The author and the players discuss in depth a wide range of topics, including masculinity, injury, and pain, big-time college recruiting, college athletes and academics, relations with fathers and coaches, encounters with Jim Crow and desegregation, strikes and labor relations in the NFL. Yielding full pictures of their lives and careers, these athletes go on to explore aging and their adjustments to retirement. Stephen H. Norwood, professor of history at the University of Oklahoma, is the author of Strikebreaking and Intimidation (2002) and Labor's Flaming Youth (1990). He is the winner of the Herbert Gutman Award in American social history and the Macmillan/SABR Award in baseball history.
Understanding American Football: the simplest, clearest, and most detailed guide for spectators by
This is an easy-to-understand reference for anyone who wants to learn more about America and American fo otball. It looks at: the language of the game; strategies an d subtleties of play; equipment and players; and associated cultural traditions. '
Aaron Rodgers: Leader of the Pack: An Intimate Portrait of a Super Bowl MVP by
The life of Aaron Rodgers, quarterback of the Super Bowl XLV champion Green Bay Packers, is a remarkable story of patience, perseverance, and resolve. Relive this journey to greatnesshighlighted by leading the Packers to a record 13th NFL championship. Written by award-winning journalist Rob Reischel and richly illustrated with exclusive color photographs, this book tells Packers fans everything they need to know about the leader of their favorite team. From his days as an undersized freshman at Pleasant Valley High School in Chico, California, to being named Super Bowl MVP, Rodgers' story is sure to both inspire and entertain.
Peyton Manning: Leader of the Broncos by
Through the words and images of the Denver Post, this book captures the impact of Peyton Manning’s arrival in Denver, from his signing in March and his first game in a Broncos uniform through the team’s push to the top of the AFC standings and into the playoffs. Essential reading for Broncos fans heading into the team’s second season with Manning under center, this work celebrates the reemergence of a star quarterback in the aftermath of a career-threatening injury. With stories and imagery from the award-winning staff at Colorado’s largest newspaper, this keepsake encapsulates the fever pitch surrounding the Broncos’ return to greatness.
Football Training: The Pros' Guide to Becoming Bigger, Faster, Stronger by
Built from a library of grueling workouts, training secrets, and nutritional tips used by America's professional gridiron greats, this book gives an inside look at the best workouts, together with instructions and advice from ten of professional football's most prolific and well-conditioned players and their coaches. The pros' training methods are compiled into detailed workout programs, with step-by-step exercise descriptions, that will improve on-field performance in the safest and most effective ways possible. Such greats as Reggie Bush, Payton Manning, and Brian Urlacher perform actual workouts in this illustrative guide that will help all levels of athlete, or anyone else interested in diversifying their fitness approaches, step up their game.
The Ultimate Guide to Weight Training for Football by 
Cheating the Spread: gamblers, point shavers, and game fixers in college football and basketball by
Delving into the history of gambling and corruption in intercollegiate sports, Cheating the Spread recounts all of the major gambling scandals in college football and basketball. Digging through court records, newspapers, government documents, and university archives and conducting private interviews, Albert J. Figone finds that game rigging has been pervasive and nationwide throughout most of the sports' history. The insidious practice has spread to implicate not only bookies and unscrupulous gamblers but also college administrators, athletic organizers, coaches, fellow students, and the athletes themselves. Naming the players, coaches, gamblers, and go-betweens involved, Figone discusses numerous college basketball and football games reported to have been fixed and describes the various methods used to gain unfair advantage, inside information, or undue profit. His survey of college football includes early years of gambling on games between established schools such as Yale, Princeton, and Harvard; Notre Dame's All-American halfback and skilled gambler George Gipp; and the 1962 allegations of insider information between Alabama coach Paul "Bear" Bryant and former Georgia coach James Wallace "Wally" Butts; and many other recent incidents. Notable events in basketball include the 1951 scandal involving City College of New York and six other schools throughout the East Coast and the Midwest; the 1961 point-shaving incident that put a permanent end to the Dixie Classic tournament; the 1978 scheme in which underworld figures recruited and bribed several Boston College players to ensure a favorable point spread; the 1994-95 Northwestern scandal in which players bet against their own team; and other recent examples of compromised gameplay and gambling.
College Football: history, spectacle, controversy by
"In March [1892] Stanford and California had played the first college football game on the Pacific Coast in San Francisco... The pregame activities included a noisy parade down streets bedecked with school colors. Tickets sold so fast that the Stanford student manager, future president Herbert Hoover, and his California counterpart, could not keep count of the gold and silver coins. When they finally totaled up the proceeds, they found that the revenues amounted to $30,000--a fair haul for a game that had to be temporarily postponed because no one had thought to bring a ball!"--from College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy, Chapter Three
In this comprehensive history of America's popular pastime, John Sayle Watterson shows how college football in more than one hundred years has evolved from a simple game played by college students into a lucrative, semiprofessional enterprise. With a historian's grasp of the context and a novelist's eye for the telling detail, Watterson presents a compelling portrait rich in anecdotes, colorful personalities, and troubling patterns.
He tells how the infamous Yale-Princeton "fiasco" of 1881, in which Yale forced a 0-0 tie in a championship game by retaining possession of the ball for the entire game, eventually led to the first-down rule that would begin to transform Americanized rugby into American football. He describes the kicks and punches, gouged eyes, broken collarbones, and flagrant rule violations that nearly led to the sport's demise (including such excesses as a Yale player who wore a uniform soaked in blood from a slaughterhouse). And he explains the reforms of 1910, which gave official approval to a radical new tactic traditionalists were sure would doom the game as they knew it--the forward pass.
As college football grew in the booming economy of the 1920s, Watterson explains, the flow of cash added fuel to an already explosive mix. Coaches like Knute Rockne became celebrities in their own right, with highly paid speaking engagements and product endorsements. At the same time, the emergence of the first professional teams led to inevitable scandals involving recruitment and subsidies for student-athletes. Revelations of illicit aid to athletes in the 1930s led to failed attempts at reform by the fledgling NCAA in the postwar "Sanity Code," intended to control abuses by permitting limited subsidies to college players but which actually paved the way for the "free ride" many players receive today.
Watterson also explains how the growth of TV revenue led to college football programs' unprecedented prosperity, just as the rise of professional football seemed to relegate college teams to "minor league" status. He explores issues of gender and race, from the shocked reactions of spectators to the first female cheerleaders in the 1930s to their successful exploitation by Roone Arledge three decades later. He describes the role of African-American players, from the days when Southern schools demanded all-white teams (and Northern schools meekly complied); through the black armbands and protests of the 60s; to one of the game's few successful, if limited, reforms, as black athletes dominate the playing field while often being shortchanged in the classroom.
Today, Watterson observes, colleges' insatiable hunger for revenues has led to an abuse-filled game nearly indistinguishable from the professional model of the NFL. After examining the standard solutions for reform, he offers proposals of his own, including greater involvement by faculty, trustees, and college presidents. Ultimately, however, Watterson concludes that the history of college football is one in which the rules of the game have changed, but those of human nature have not.
The System: the glory and scandal of big-time college football by
A revelatory account based on the authors' unprecedented access to the NCAA's highest-level programs throughout the 2012 season describes its high-powered system of billion-dollar television deals, high-priced coaches, football "hostessing," castoff athlete-students and paid test takers.
The Blind Side by
Michael Oher is a homeless African-American teenager who is from a broken home. Mike is taken in by the Touhys, a well-to-do white family who help him fulfill his potential. At the same time, Oher's presence in the Touhys' lives leads them to some insightful self-discoveries of their own. Living in his new environment, Mike faces a completely different set of challenges to overcome - as both a football player and student. Mike works hard and, with the help of his coaches and adopted family, becomes an All-American offensive left tackle.
Remember the Titans by
A drama of forced high school integration in Alexandria, Virginia in 1971. After leading his team to fifteen winning seasons, white football coach Bill Yoast is demoted and replaced by African-American Herman Boone, tough, opinionated and as different from Yoast as could be. The two men overcome their differences and turn a group of hostile young men into champions. A rousing celebration of how a town torn apart by resentment, friction and mistrust comes together in triumphant harmony.