Books, Sports, Football (American), Professional

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Jeff Pearlman
Boys Will Be Boys: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty
by Harper (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2008-09-16)

They were America's Team—the high-priced, high-glamour, high-flying Dallas Cowboys of the 1990s, who won three Super Bowls and made as many headlines off the field as on it. Led by Emmitt Smith, the charismatic Deion "Prime Time" Sanders, and Hall of Famers Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin, the Cowboys rank among the greatest of all NFL dynasties. In similar fashion to his New York Times bestseller The Bad Guys Won!, about the 1986 New York Mets, in Boys Will Be Boys, award-winning writer Jeff Pearlman chronicles the outrageous antics and dazzling talent of a team fueled by ego, sex, drugs—and unrivaled greatness. Rising from the ashes of a 1–15 season in 1989 to capture three Super Bowl trophies in four years, the Dallas Cowboys were guided by a swashbuckling, skirt-chasing, power-hungry owner, Jerry Jones, and his two eccentric, hard-living coaches, Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer. Together the three built a juggernaut that America loved and loathed. But for a team that was ...

Frank Gifford, Peter Richmond
The Glory Game: How the 1958 NFL Championship Changed Football Forever
by Harper (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2008-11-04)

In 1958 Frank Gifford was the golden boy on the glamour team in the most celebrated city in the NFL. When his New York Giants played the Baltimore Colts for the league championship that year, it became the single most memorable contest in the history of professional football. Broadcast to an audience of millions, it was the first title game ever to go into sudden-death overtime. Its drama, excitement, and controversy riveted the nation and helped propel football to the forefront of the American sports landscape. Now, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of "The Greatest Game Ever Played," New York Giants Hall of Famer and longtime television analyst Frank Gifford provides an inside-the-helmet account that will take its place in the annals of sports literature. Drawing on the poignant and humorous memories of every living player from the game—including fellow Hall of Famers Sam Huff, Andy Robustelli, Art Donovan, Lenny Moore, and Raymond Berry—as well as the author's own ...

Michael Lewis
The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game
by W. W. Norton (Hardcover)

By the author of the bestselling Moneyball: in football, as in life, the value we place on people changes with the rules of the games they play.The young man at the center of this extraordinary and moving story will one day be among the most highly paid athletes in the National Football League. When we first meet him, he is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or any of the things a child might learn in school—such as, say, how to read or write. Nor has he ever touched a football.What changes? He takes up football, and school, after a rich, Evangelical, Republican family plucks him from the mean streets. Their love is the first great force that alters the world's perception of the boy, whom they adopt. The second force is the evolution of professional football itself into a game where the quarterback must be protected at any cost. Our protagonist turns out to be the priceless combination of size, ...

Sal Paolantonio
How Football Explains America
by Triumph Books (IL) (Hardcover)

Here at last is the first book to fully explain how and why the game of football became America's most powerful and financially successful entertainment phenomenon--and how this country's pioneers of sports, games, industry, and politics helped transform a sleepy game inherited from Europe into one that would explain what America wanted to become and who we are as a people. In How Football Explains America, Sal Paolantonio, ESPN football reporter and a former national political reporter, takes you all the way back to 1876, when the United States was celebrating its 100th birthday, and explains how and why the stodgy and low-scoring games of soccer and rugby were rejected for a game that reflected America's lust to control--Manifest Destiny!--an entire continent. How Football Explains America takes you through how and why President Teddy Roosevelt saved football, how and why Jim Thorpe and Bill Walsh changed the game, and how and why it was influenced by Hollywood and West ...

Mark Bowden
The Best Game Ever: Giants vs. Colts, 1958, and the Birth of the Modern NFL
by Atlantic Monthly Press (Hardcover)

On December 28, 1958, the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts met under the lights of Yankee Stadium for the NFL Championship game. Played in front of sixty-four thousand fans and millions of television viewers around the country, the game would be remembered as the greatest in football history. On the field and roaming the sidelines were seventeen 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. An estimated forty-five million viewers—at that time the largest crowd to have ever watched a football game—tuned in to see what would become the first sudden-death contest in NFL history. It was a battle of the league's best offense—the Colts—versus its best defense—the Giants. And it was a contest between the blue-collar Baltimore team versus the glamour boys of the Giants squad. The Best Game Ever is a brilliant portrait of how a ...

Jack Cavanaugh
Giants Among Men: How Robustelli, Huff, Gifford, and the Giants Made New York a Football Town and Changed the NFL
by Random House (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2008-10-07)

From the mid-1950s to the early 1960s, when basketball’s Boston Celtics were piecing together a run for the ages, when Montreal’s Canadiens were in the midst of notching a record-setting five straight Stanley Cups, and when the New York Yankees were the once-and-future kings of the diamond, one team boosted the NFL to national prominence as none other: the New York Giants. In Giants Among Men, Jack Cavanaugh, the acclaimed author of Tunney, transports us to the NFL’s golden age to introduce the close-knit and diverse group that won the heart of a city, helped spread the gospel of pro football across the nation, and recast the NFL as a media colossus. Central to Cavanaugh’s narrative, and emblematic of the Giants’ bond with their followers, was a hard-nosed future Hall of Fame defensive end named Andy Robustelli. A World War II combat vet, a graduate of Arnold College, undersized and nearing age thirty, Robustelli nevertheless anchored a Giants defensive unit so ...

Sports Illustrated: Brett Favre: The Tribute
by Sports Illustrated (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2008-03-27)

No other contemporary athlete has been as admired among peers and beloved among fans as Brett Favre. From his arrival in Green Bay in 1992 to his retirement in 2008, the Packers' strong-armed, free-spirited quarterback thrilled NFL fans with his exemplary talent and passionate style, and inspired them with his courage in confronting personal challenges. SPORTS ILLUSTRATED's tribute to Favre is the definitive account of a remarkable career, collecting the best stories and photographs from the pages of SI to chronicle Favre's rise from humble coach's son in tiny Kiln, Miss., to premier passer of his generation and th personification of the American sports ideal. The product of SI's unparalleled NFL access and insight, Brett Favre: The Tribute include 16 of SI's finest Favre stories, by such renowned writers as Peter King, Michael Silver, Leigh Montville, Jeff MacGregor and Alan Shipnuck, plus brilliant pictures from the recognized leader in sports photography--stunning action ...

Tom Coughlin, Brian Curtis
A Team to Believe In: Our Journey to the Super Bowl Championship
by Ballantine Books (Hardcover) (Release Date: 2008-09-02)

After a tough 2006 season, the New York Giants appeared to be heading for more disappointment–and potential shake-ups–in the coming season. Instead, they fought their way to an unforgettable Super Bowl finish against the previously undefeated New England Patriots.In A Team to Believe In, head coach Tom Coughlin gives the ultimate insider’s account of the Giants’ 2007 campaign and reflects on the resilience and selflessness that allowed the team to succeed. Behind the saga of persistence and on-the-field triumphs, however, is the story of how Coughlin, a proud and intensely private man, often mischaracterized by the press as a strict disciplinarian, has continually made subtle adjustments to his approach to the game and to the new players. Whether giving the right speech for the right occasion, drawing media criticism away from his players, or fostering team unity with offbeat events and smartly timed relaxed curfews, Coughlin approached the season willing to make the ...

Norm Hitzges
The Greatest Team Ever: The Dallas Cowboys Dynasty of the 1990s
by Thomas Nelson (Hardcover)

Three Super Bowls in 4 years is just part of the story. Here, in pictures and words, is why the Dallas Cowboys of 1991-1995 was the greatest team to ever play the game. Get behind the scenes, inside the locker room, andinto the personal and professional lives of the players, coaches, and owners with this collection of incredible stories and photos chronicling key moments in the history of the franchise.  

Ralph Vacchiano
Eli Manning: The Making of a Quarterback
by Skyhorse Publishing (Hardcover)

New York Giants beat writer Ralph Vacchiano examines the quarterback position in the NFL from all angles, using Giants quarterback (and Super Bowl XLII MVP) Eli Manning as his primary focus.When Eli Manning found teammate Plaxico Burress in the end zone with just 35 seconds remaining in Super Bowl XLII, he completed what was perhaps the greatest game-winning drive and unlikely upset in Super Bowl history. But the drive, which also included a remarkable escape and pass completion to unheralded receiver David Tyree, was the culmination of years of promise and development. Champion quarterbacks aren't made overnight.With Manning, the Super Bowl MVP, as its focal point, New York Daily News Giants beat writer Ralph Vacchiano's Eli Manning: The Making of a Quarterback is a fascinating insider's look at the National Football League, how stars are made and crushed, and how fortunes are won and lost on the performance of one man: the quarterback. From the bold draft day trade that brought ...

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