Best Selling Football Books

The top 50 most popular and best selling football ebooks at the Apple iBookstore. Chart of the football iBook best sellers updated daily.

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Sports Ebook Best Sellers

Top Football eBook Best Sellers

1

Boys Will Be Boys - Jeff Pearlman Cover Art

Boys Will Be Boys

Boys Will Be Boys The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboys Dynasty by Jeff Pearlman

New York Times  bestseller From celebrated sports writer Jeff Pearlman, author of The Bad Guys Won, a rollicking, completely unabashed account of the glory days of the legendary Dallas Cowboys 1990s dynasty. They were called America's Team. Led by Emmitt Smith, the charismatic Deion "Prime Time" Sanders, Hall of Famers Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin—and lorded over by swashbuckling, power-hungry owner Jerry Jones and his two hard-living coaches, Jimmy Johnson and Barry Switzer—the Cowboys seemed indomitable on the football field throughout the 1990s. Off the field, this inside story reveals the 'Boys were a dysfunctional circus, fueled by ego, sex, drugs, and jaw-dropping excess. What they achieved on game day was astonishing; what they did the rest of the week was unbelievable. Boys Will Be Boys is the story of the Dallas Cowboys in their prime—a team of wild-partying, out-of-control glory-hounds that won three Super Bowls in four years and earned their rightful place in sports lore as the most beloved and despised dynasty in NFL history. This gripping work of sports journalism reveals the whole story: The Dynasty’s Rise and Fall: Go inside the locker room and front office, from the unceremonious firing of Tom Landry to the back-to-back Super Bowl victories and the bitter divorce between owner Jerry Jones and coach Jimmy Johnson. Unforgettable Hall of Fame Talent: Relive the on-field brilliance of Troy Aikman, Emmitt Smith, and Michael Irvin, and the off-the-field chaos that followed them, Deion Sanders, and the rest of America’s Team. Sex, Drugs, and Pro Football: An unflinching, behind-the-scenes look at the rampant partying, drug use, and jaw-dropping excess that defined the ’Boys when they weren’t on the gridiron. Definitive NFL History: Based on hundreds of interviews, this is the definitive account of how the most dominant—and notorious—team of the ’90s was built and how it all came crashing down.

2

No Dumb Questions - Jason Kelce & Travis Kelce Cover Art

No Dumb Questions

No Dumb Questions And All of Our Dumbest Answers by Jason Kelce & Travis Kelce

Brothers, Super Bowl Champions, and now, published authors. That’s right, authors. Look, we’re as surprised as you. New Heights hosts Jason and Travis Kelce attempt to tackle some of life’s dumbest questions from the 92%ers. Join us on this discov­ery of knowledge as we cover topics like sports, relationships, parenting, gorilla fights, and many more quandaries that man has pondered since he first gazed upon the stars. FOOTBALL: Why don’t players squirt their own water?CUISINE: Do you pour the cereal first or the milk?SCIENCE: If you could make one of your body parts detachable, which would you choose? When you think philosophy, you’ll probably think of names like Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle. But none of those men have won a single Super Bowl, so what do they know? No Dumb Questions is a collection of Jason and Travis’s wisest, funniest, and most electric debates that could only come from the collected wisdom of a combined twenty-seven seasons in the NFL.

3

The Evolution of the RPO - Brent Dearmon Cover Art

The Evolution of the RPO

The Evolution of the RPO by Brent Dearmon

Dearmon and Haas present the evolution of RPO which started with Gus Malzahn’s Auburn offense as the base.  This book details the RPO as it is used with the gap schemes such as power and counter, the inside and outside zone, and the buck sweep with multiple pass options.

4

Friday Night Lights (25th Anniversary Edition) - H. G. Bissinger Cover Art

Friday Night Lights (25th Anniversary Edition)

Friday Night Lights (25th Anniversary Edition) A Town, a Team, and a Dream by H. G. Bissinger

Named Sports Illustrated' s best football book of all time and a #1 NYT bestseller, this is the classic story of a high school football team whose win-loss record has a profound influence on the town around them. Return once again to the timeless account of the Permian Panthers of Odessa -- the winningest high-school football team in Texas history. Socially and racially divided, Odessa isn't known to be a place big on dreams, but every Friday night from September to December, when the Panthers play football, dreams can come true. With frankness and compassion, Pulitzer Prize winner H. G. Bissinger unforgettably captures a season in the life of Odessa and shows how single-minded devotion to the team shapes the community and inspires -- and sometimes shatters -- the teenagers who wear the Panthers' uniforms. The inspiration for the hit television program and film of the same name, this anniversary edition features a new afterword by the author.

5

Why We Love Football - Joe Posnanski Cover Art

Why We Love Football

Why We Love Football A History in 100 Moments by Joe Posnanski

INSTANT NATIONAL BESTSELLER A Kirkus Reviews Most Anticipated Book of the Fall A moving celebration of the history of American football from the New York Times bestselling author of Why We Love Baseball After his bestselling home run books Why We Love Baseball and The Baseball 100 , Joe Posnanski turns from the national pastime to the number one sport in America. Why We Love Football is Posnanski’s newest must-have deep dive into the archives and legends of the sport, and the result is a rousing tale of the 100 greatest moments in football lore. This is the best kind of sports writing. Entertaining, enlightening, heartbreaking, hilarious, and always fascinating, these stories of the sport offer a panoramic look across its history. From hidden gems and classic tales to famous moments told from previously unheard perspectives, this book is the football book for even its most ardent fans. From Patrick Mahomes's magic to the Ice Bowl, from Doug Flutie's Hail Mary pass to a plethora of football "miracles," Why We Love Football is an unforgettable, conversational masterpiece you won’t ever want to end, and a can't-miss take on football from one of the greatest sportswriters of our time.

6

Football - Chuck Klosterman Cover Art

Football

Football by Chuck Klosterman

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER “Could this be the best book on football ever?” —Tyler Cowen "Another masterwork from one of our greatest minds.” — Esquire “[An] essential playoff-season read.” —People A hilarious but nonetheless groundbreaking contribution to the argument about which force shapes American life the most. For two kinds of readers—those who know it’s football and those who are about to find out. Chuck Klosterman— New York Times bestselling critic, journalist, and, yes, football psychotic—did not write this book to deepen your appreciation of the game. He’s not trying to help you become that person at the party, or to teach you how to make better bets, or to validate any preexisting views you might have about the sport (positive or negative). Football does, in fact, do all of those things. But not in the way such things have been done in the past, and never in a way any normal person would expect. Cultural theorists talk about hyperobjects—phenomena that bulk so large that their true dimensions are hidden in plain sight. In 2023, 93 of the 100 most-watched programs on U.S. television were NFL football games. This is not an anomaly. This is how society is best understood. Football is not merely the country’s most popular sport; it is engrained in almost everything that explains what America is, even for those who barely pay attention. Klosterman gets to the bottom of all of it. He takes us to a metaphorical projection of Texas, where the religion of six-man football merges with America’s Team [ sic ] and makes an inexplicable impact on a boy in North Dakota. He dissects the question of natural greatness, the paradox of gambling and war, and the timeless caricature of the uncompromising head coach. He interrogates the perfection of football’s marriage with television and the morality of acceptable risk. He even conjures an extinction-level event. If Žižek liked the SEC more than he liked cinema, if Stephen Jay Gould cared about linebackers more than he cared about dinosaurs, if Steve Martin played quarterback instead of the banjo . . . it would still be nothing like this. A century ago, Yale’s legendary coach Walter Camp wrote his unified theory of the game. He called it Football . Chuck Klosterman has given us a new Camp for the new age, rooted in a personal history he cannot escape.

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If These Walls Could Talk: New York Jets - Marty Lyons & Lou Sahadi Cover Art

If These Walls Could Talk: New York Jets

If These Walls Could Talk: New York Jets Stories from the New York Jets Sideline, Locker Room, and Press Box by Marty Lyons & Lou Sahadi

Relive the glory days and untold stories of the New York Jets! Having spent 11 seasons at defensive tackle for the New York Jets before later joining the broadcasting team as a radio analyst, Marty Lyons knows what it means to live and breathe Jets football. In If These Walls Could Talk: New York Jets , Lyons provides insight into the Jets inner sanctum as only he can, from the New York Sack Exchange days alongside the likes of Joe Klecko to the current roster helmed by Sam Darnold. Get the real story behind the headlines, controversies, and unforgettable moments that have shaped the team's identity. Discover the bonds that tie players together, the strategies that defined eras, and the challenges faced on and off the field. For Jets fans and football history buffs, this is a must-read journey through the heart of the team.

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The System - Jeff Benedict & Armen Keteyian Cover Art

The System

The System The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football by Jeff Benedict & Armen Keteyian

A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year  NCAA football is big business. Every Saturday millions of people file into massive stadiums or tune in on television as "athlete-students" give everything they've got to make their team a success. Billions of dollars now flow into the game. But what is the true cost? The players have no share in the oceans of money. And once the lights go down, the glitter doesn't shine so brightly. Filled with mind-blowing details of major NCAA football scandals, with stops at Ohio State, Tennessee, Texas Tech, Missouri, BYU, LSU, Texas A&M and many more, The System explores and exposes the complex, and perhaps broken, machine that churns behind the glamour of college football.  With a New Afterword

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Earn the Right to Win - Tom Coughlin & David Fisher Cover Art

Earn the Right to Win

Earn the Right to Win How Success in Any Field Starts with Superior Preparation by Tom Coughlin & David Fisher

A top NFL coach offers leadership advice that applies from the field to the office Tom Coughlin led the New York Giants to two Super Bowl victories with his unique system of relentless preparation and resilience. He teaches his players that you can never guarantee a win, but you can always earn the right to win-with focus, hard work, and anticipation of obstacles. Now Coughlin shows how his teachings apply beyond the gridiron, illustrating his points with previously untold stories about players like Eli Manning, Doug Flutie, and Michael Strahan. His wisdom can help leaders in any field rev up their own organizations. 'Tom Coughlin challenged us and prepared us to handle anything that was thrown at us ... The lessons I learned from him weren't limited to football. They were applicable to every aspect of my life' -Michael Strahan Tom Coughlin is one of the most successful coaches in NFL history. Before winning two Super Bowls with the New York Giants, he coached the Jacksonville Jaguars for nine seasons, leading them to two appearances in the AFC Championship Game. David Fisher is the co-author of seventeen New York Times bestsellers.

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It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium - John Ed Bradley Cover Art

It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium

It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium by John Ed Bradley

“A lyrical memoir . . . about his teammates, his coaches, his parents and the magnetic power of football in Louisiana.”—NPR   “The best sports book of the year.”— Sports Illustrated Inspired by a classic essay about a visit to a dying coach, It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium explores in gorgeous detail the inescapable pull of college football—the cocky smiles behind the face masks, the two-a-day drills, the emotionally charged bus rides to the stadium, the curfew checks, the film-study sessions, the locker room antics, and the yawning void left in one’s soul the moment the final whistle sounds.   To understand why it’s so painful to give up the game, you must first understand the intimacy of the huddle. “It ends for everybody,” writes John Ed Bradley, “and then it starts all over again, in ways you never anticipated. Marty Dufresne sits in his wheelchair listening to the Tiger fight song . . . Ramsey Darder endures prison by playing the games over in his head . . . Big Ed Stanton never took up the game of golf, and yet he rides the streets of Bayou Vista in a cart nearly identical to Coach Mac’s, recalling the one time the old man invited him for a ride.” Far more than a memoir,  It Never Rains in Tiger Stadium  is a brutally honest, profoundly moving look at what it means to surrender something you love.

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Football: Great Writing About the National Sport - John Schulian & Various Authors Cover Art

Football: Great Writing About the National Sport

Football: Great Writing About the National Sport A Library of America Special Publication by John Schulian & Various Authors

Men’s Journal ’s “Ultimate Football Reading List” “First-rate” sports writing on American football from an all-star line-up that includes Red Smith, Jimmy Breslin, Michael Lewis, and more ( Wall Street Journal ) Since football’s meteoric rise in the mid-twentieth century, the standout writers on the sport have gone behind and beyond the spectacle to reveal the complexity, the contradictions, and the deeper humanity at the heart of the game. In a landmark collection, The Library of America brings together the very best of their work: gems of deadline reportage, incisive longform profiles of football’s storied figures, and autobiographical accounts by players and others close to the game. Celebrating the sport without shying away from its sometimes devastating personal and social costs, the forty-four pieces gathered here testify to football’s boundless capacity to generate outsized characters and memorable tales.

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The Ones Who Hit the Hardest - Chad Millman & Shawn Coyne Cover Art

The Ones Who Hit the Hardest

The Ones Who Hit the Hardest The Steelers, the Cowboys, the '70s, and the Fight for America's Soul by Chad Millman & Shawn Coyne

A stirring portrait of the decade when the Steelers became the greatest team in NFL history, even as Pittsburgh was crumbling around them. In the 1970s, the city of Pittsburgh was in need of heroes. In that decade the steel industry, long the lifeblood of the city, went into massive decline, putting 150,000 steelworkers out of work. And then the unthinkable happened: The Pittsburgh Steelers, perennial also-rans in the NFL, rose up to become the most feared team in the league, dominating opponents with their famed "Steel Curtain" defense, winning four Super Bowls in six years, and lifting the spirits of a city on the brink. In The Ones Who Hit the Hardest , Chad Millman and Shawn Coyne trace the rise of the Steelers amidst the backdrop of the fading city they fought for, bringing to life characters such as: Art Rooney, the owner of the team so beloved by Pittsburgh that he was known simply as "The Chief"; Chuck Noll, the headstrong coach who used the ethos of steelworkers to motivate his players; Terry Bradshaw, the strong-armed and underestimated QB; Joe Green, the defensive tackle whose fighting nature lifted the franchise; and Jack Lambert, the linebacker whose snarling, toothless grin embodied the Pittsburgh defense. Every story needs a villain, and in this one it's played by the Dallas Cowboys. As Pittsburgh rusted, the new and glittering metropolis of Dallas, rich from the capital infusion of oil revenue, signaled the future of America. Indeed, the town brimmed with such confidence that the Cowboys felt comfortable nicknaming themselves "America's Team." Throughout the 1970s, the teams jostled for control of the NFL-the Cowboys doing it with finesse and the Steelers doing it with brawn-culminating in Super Bowl XIII in 1979, when the aging Steelers attempted to hold off the Cowboys one last time. Thoroughly researched and grippingly written, The Ones Who Hit the Hardest is a stirring tribute to a city, a team, and an era.

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The TB12 Method - Tom Brady Cover Art

The TB12 Method

The TB12 Method How to Achieve a Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance by Tom Brady

The #1 New York Times bestseller by the 7-time Super Bowl champion The first book by NFL legend Tom Brady, former quarterback with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who reached unimaginable heights of excellence into his forties—a gorgeously illustrated and deeply practical “athlete’s bible” that reveals Brady’s revolutionary approach to sustained peak performance for athletes of all kinds and all ages. In this new edition of The TB12 Method , Tom Brady further explains and details the revolutionary training, conditioning, and wellness system that has kept him atop the NFL at an age when most players are deep into retirement. Brady—along with the expert Body Coaches at TB12, the performance lifestyle brand he cofounded in 2013 with Alex Guerrero—explain the principles and philosophies of pliability, a paradigm-shifting fitness concept that focuses on a more natural, healthier way of exercising, training, and living. Filled with lessons from Brady’s own training regimen, The TB12 Method provides step-by-step guidance on how develop and maintain one’s own peak performance while dramatically decreasing injury risks. This illustrated, highly visual manual also offers more effective approaches to functional strength & conditioning, proper hydration, supplementation, cognitive fitness, restorative sleep, and nutritious, easy-to-execute recipes to help readers fuel-up and recover. Brady steadfastly believes that the TB12 approach has kept him competitive while extending his career, and that it can make any athlete, male or female, in any sport and at any level achieve his or her own peak performance and do what they love, better and for longer. With instructions, drills, photos, in-depth case studies that Brady himself has used, along with personal anecdotes and experiences from his legendary career, The TB12 Method gives you a better way to train and get results with Tom Brady himself as living proof.

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Take Your Eye off the Ball - Pat Kirwan Cover Art

Take Your Eye off the Ball

Take Your Eye off the Ball How to Watch Football by Knowing Where to Look by Pat Kirwan

Take Your Eye Off the Ball is not a beginner's introduction to football, nor is it a technical manual for only the most studious of fans.  Instead, it clearly and simply explains the intricacies and nuances that affect the outcomes of every NFL game.

15

How Good Do You Want to Be? - Nick Saban & Brian Curtis Cover Art

How Good Do You Want to Be?

How Good Do You Want to Be? A Champion's Tips on How to Lead and Succeed at Work and in Life by Nick Saban & Brian Curtis

The winning philosophy for creating and inspiring success that will help you triumph at work and in life from renowned football coach Nick Saban—with a foreword by Bill Belichick Excellence doesn’t happen overnight. It comes from hard work, consistency, the drive to be the best, and a passion for what you do. Few understand this better than Nick Saban. With more than three decades of experience as a player and coach, Saban has worked alongside some of the game’s legends and has seen firsthand how great leaders encourage greatness in others. In this candid and thoughtful guide, he shares his unique wisdom: • Organization, Organization, Organization: Create an environment where everybody knows his or her responsibilities—and each is responsible to the entire group. • Motivate to Dominate: Understand the psychology of teams and individuals, and use that knowledge to breed success. • No Other Way than Right: Practice ethics and values—and demand the same from your team. • Look in the Mirror: Maintain an understanding of who you are by knowing your strengths and your weaknesses. How Good Do You Want to Be? is more than the story of how Nick Saban motivates his staff and players to excel—it is also the memoir of one of America’s most successful coaches. Filled with instructive anecdotes and illuminated by never-before-told stories of his life and career, this is a book that challenges and inspires us all to be our best.

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League of Denial - Mark Fainaru-Wada & Steve Fainaru Cover Art

League of Denial

League of Denial The NFL, Concussions, and the Battle for Truth by Mark Fainaru-Wada & Steve Fainaru

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “meticulously documented and endlessly chilling” ( The New York Times ) exploration of the NFL’s decades-long attempt to deny and cover up mounting evidence connecting brain damage from football with CTE. “A first-rate piece of reporting [that] adds crucial detail, texture, and news to the concussion story, which despite the NFL’s best efforts, isn’t going away.”— Time ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Boston Globe, NPR “Professional football players do not sustain frequent repetitive blows to the brain on a regular basis.” So concluded the National Football League in a December 2005 scientific paper on concussions in America’s most popular sport. That judgment, implausible even to a casual fan, also contradicted the opinion of a growing cadre of neuroscientists who worked in vain to convince the NFL that it was facing a deadly new scourge: chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a chronic brain disease that was driving an alarming number of players—including some of the all-time greats—to madness. Everyone knows that football is violent and dangerous. But what the players who built the NFL into a $10 billion industry didn’t know—and what the league sought to shield from them—is that no amount of padding could protect the human brain from the force generated by modern football. In League of Denial, award-winning ESPN investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru expose the public health crisis that emerged from the playing fields and examine how the league used its power and resources to attack independent scientists and elevate its own flawed research—a campaign with echoes of Big Tobacco’s fight to deny the connection between smoking and lung cancer. They chronicle the tragic fates of players like Hall of Fame Pittsburgh Steelers center Mike Webster, who was so disturbed at the time of his death he fantasized about shooting NFL executives, and former San Diego Chargers great Junior Seau, whose diseased brain became the target of a scientific battle between researchers and the NFL. Based on exclusive interviews, previously undisclosed documents, and private e-mails, League of Denial is the story of what the NFL knew and when it knew it—questions at the heart of a crisis that threatens American football—and of the battle for the sport’s future.

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It's Better to Be Feared - Seth Wickersham Cover Art

It's Better to Be Feared

It's Better to Be Feared The New England Patriots Dynasty and the Pursuit of Greatness by Seth Wickersham

NOW WITH A NEW EPILOGUE ON THE 2021 SEASON AND TOM BRADY’S BRIEF RETIREMENT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER SPORTS ILLUSTRATED • NONFICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR National Sports Media Association • Book of the Year Kirkus Reviews • Best Nonfiction of the Year “Seth Wickersham has managed to do the impossible: he has pulled off the definitive document of the Belichick/Brady dynasty.” —Bill Simmons, The Ringer The explosive, long-awaited account of the making of the greatest dynasty in football history—from the acclaimed ESPN reporter who has been there from the very beginning. Over two unbelievable decades, the New England Patriots were not only the NFL’s most dominant team, but also—and by far—the most secretive. How did they achieve and sustain greatness—and what were the costs? In It's Better to Be Feared, Seth Wickersham, one of the country’s finest long form and investigative sportswriters, tells the full, behind-the-scenes story of the Patriots, capturing the brilliance, ambition, and vanity that powered and ultimately unraveled them. Based on hundreds of interviews conducted since 2001, Wickersham’s chronicle is packed with revelations, taking us deep into Bill Belichick’s tactical ingenuity and Tom Brady’s unique mentality while also reporting on their divergent paths in 2020, including Brady’s run to the Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Raucous, unvarnished, and definitive, It’s Better to Be Feared is an instant classic of American sportswriting in the tradition of Michael Lewis, David Maraniss, and David Halberstam.

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Football Rules and Positions In A Day For Dummies - Howie Long & John Czarnecki Cover Art

Football Rules and Positions In A Day For Dummies

Football Rules and Positions In A Day For Dummies by Howie Long & John Czarnecki

Tackle football basics in a day? Easy. If you've ever wanted to know the difference between a touchdown and a touchback, or how a running back's role differs from a linebacker's, this handy guide gets you up-to-speed in no time. Football Rules & Positions In A Day For Dummies gives you a focused guide to the rules, regulations, and player roles of one of the most popular American sports. The essential information you need to understand and enjoy America's greatest game Expert coverage of the game's rules and regulations Helpful breakdowns of football positions and their roles in offense, defense, and special teams Online component takes you beyond the book with bonus content and features Get set to impress your friends with your newfound knowledge in no time!

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Home Team - Sean Payton & Ellis Henican Cover Art

Home Team

Home Team Coaching the Saints and New Orleans Back to Life by Sean Payton & Ellis Henican

The New York Times bestseller that's "heaven in hardcover" ( New Orleans Times-Picayune ) for Saints fans. In the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, no symbol of disaster was more potent than New Orleans' Superdome: it became a horrific shelter of last resort where the utterly desperate rode out the storm. Four years later, in that very stadium, the New Orleans Saints won the NFC championship and earned their first-ever trip to the Super Bowl, where they defeated the favored Indianapolis Colts 31-17. This is the inspirational true story of a city recovering from disaster and a team with a history of heartbreak, as seen through the eyes of the coach who would help elevate them both to long- forgotten greatness.

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Twelve Mighty Orphans - Jim Dent Cover Art

Twelve Mighty Orphans

Twelve Mighty Orphans The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football by Jim Dent

The remarkable true story of an orphanage and the man who created one of the greatest football teams Texas has ever known, now a major motion picture. More than a century ago, a school was constructed in Fort Worth, Texas, for the purpose of housing and educating the orphans of Texas Freemasons. It was a humble project that for years existed quietly on a hillside east of town. Life at the Masonic Home was about to change, though, with the arrival of a lean, bespectacled coach by the name of Rusty Russell. Here was a man who could bring rain in the midst of a drought. Here was a man who, in virtually no time at all, brought the orphans' story into the homes of millions of Americans. In the 1930s and 1940s, there was nothing bigger in Texas high school football than the Twelve Mighty Orphans —a group of orphans bound together by hardship and death. These youngsters, in spite of being outweighed by at least thirty pounds per man, were the toughest football team around. They began with nothing—not even a football—yet in a few years were playing for the state championship on the highest level of Texas football. Jim Dent, author of the New York Times bestselling The Junction Boys, returns with his most powerful story of human courage and determination in Twelve Mighty Orphans : The Inspiring True Story of the Mighty Mites Who Ruled Texas Football. This is a winning tribute to a courageous band of underdogs from a time when America desperately needed fresh hope and big dreams. A remarkable and inspirational story of an orphanage and the man who created one of the greatest football teams Texas has ever known, Twelve Mighty Orphans is a profound lesson in fighting back and clinging to faith. The real winners in Texas high school football were not the kids from the biggest schools, or the ones wearing the most expensive uniforms. They were the scrawny kids from a tiny orphanage who wore scarred helmets and faded jerseys that did not match, kids coached by a devoted man who lived on peanuts and drove them around in a smoke-belching old truck. In writing a story of unforgettable characters and great football, Jim Dent has come forward to reclaim his place as one of the top sports authors in America today. This is their story—the original Friday Night Lights, now a major motion picture starring Luke Wilson, Vinessa Shaw, and Wayne Knight.

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Concussion - Jeanne Marie Laskas Cover Art

Concussion

Concussion by Jeanne Marie Laskas

NEW YORK TIMES  BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE • Dr. Bennet Omalu discovered something he could not ignore. The NFL tried to silence him. His courage would change everything.   “A gripping medical mystery and a dazzling portrait of the young scientist no one wanted to listen to . . . a fabulous, essential read.”—Rebecca Skloot, author of  The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks   Jeanne Marie Laskas first met the young forensic pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu in 2009, while reporting a story for  GQ  that would go on to inspire the movie  Concussion . Omalu told her about a day in September 2002, when, in a dingy morgue in downtown Pittsburgh, he picked up a scalpel and made a discovery that would rattle America in ways he’d never intended.  Omalu was new to America, chasing the dream, a deeply spiritual man escaping the wounds of civil war in Nigeria. The body on the slab in front of him belonged to a fifty-year-old named Mike Webster, aka “Iron Mike,” a Hall of Fame center for the Pittsburgh Steelers, one of the greatest ever to play the game. After retiring in 1990, Webster had suffered a dizzyingly steep decline. Toward the end of his life, he was living out of his van, tasering himself to relieve his chronic pain, and fixing his rotting teeth with Super Glue.  How did this happen?,  Omalu asked himself.  How did a young man like Mike Webster end up like this?   The search for answers would change Omalu’s life forever and put him in the crosshairs of one of the most powerful corporations in America: the National Football League. What Omalu discovered in Webster’s brain—proof that Iron Mike’s mental deterioration was no accident but a disease caused by blows to the head that could affect everyone playing the game—was the one truth the NFL wanted to ignore.   Taut, gripping, and gorgeously told,  Concussion  is the stirring story of one unlikely man’s decision to stand up to a multibillion-dollar colossus, and to tell the world the truth.

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Gridiron Genius - Michael Lombardi Cover Art

Gridiron Genius

Gridiron Genius A Master Class in Building Teams and Winning at the Highest Level by Michael Lombardi

Former NFL general manager and three-time Super Bowl winner Michael Lombardi reveals what makes football organizations tick at the championship level. From personnel to practice to game-day decisions that win titles, Lombardi shares what he learned working with coaching legends Bill Walsh of the 49ers, Al Davis of the Raiders, and Bill Belichick of the Patriots, among others, during his three decades in football. Why do some NFL franchises dominate year after year while others can never crack the code of success? For 30 years Michael Lombardi had a front-row seat and full access as three titans--Bill Walsh, Al Davis, and Bill Belichick--reinvented the game, turning it into a national obsession while piling up Super Bowl trophies. Now, in Gridiron Genius , Lombardi provides the blueprint that makes a successful organization click and win --and the mistakes unsuccessful organizations make that keep them on the losing side time and again.      In reality, very few coaches understand the philosophies, attention to detail, and massive commitment that defined NFL juggernauts like the 49ers and the Patriots. The best organizations are not just employing players, they are building something bigger. Gridiron Genius will explain how the best leaders evaluate, acquire, and utilize personnel in ways other professional minds, football and otherwise, won't even contemplate. How do you know when to trade a player? How do you create a positive atmosphere when everyone is out to maximize his own paycheck? And why is the tight end like the knight on a chessboard?      To some, game planning consists only of designing an attack for the next opponent. But Lombardi explains how the smartest leaders script everything : from an afternoon's special-teams practice to a season's playoff run to a decade-long organizational blueprint. Readers will delight in the Lombardi tour of an NFL weekend, including what really goes on during the game on and off the field and inside the headset. First stop : Belichick's Saturday night staff meeting, where he announces how the game will go the next day. Spoiler alert : He always nails it.      Football dynasties are built through massive attention to detail and unwavering commitment. From how to build a team, to how to watch a game, to understanding the essential qualities of great leaders, Gridiron Genius gives football fans the knowledge to be the smartest person in the room every Sunday.

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Big Game - Mark Leibovich Cover Art

Big Game

Big Game The NFL in Dangerous Times by Mark Leibovich

“A raucous, smash-mouth, first-person takedown of the National Football League." —Wall Street Journal The New York Times bestseller From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of This Town , an equally merciless probing of America's biggest cultural force, pro football, at a moment of peak success and high anxiety Like millions of Americans, Mark Leibovich has spent more of his life tuned into pro football than he'd care to admit. Being a lifelong New England Patriots fan meant growing up on a steady diet of lovable loserdom. That is, until the Tom Brady/Bill Belichick era made the Pats the most ruthlessly efficient and polarizing sports dynasty of the modern NFL, and its fans the most irritating in all of Pigskin America. Leibovich kept his obsession quiet, making a nice career for himself covering that other playground for rich and overgrown children, American politics. Still, every now and then Leibovich would reach out to Tom Brady to gauge his willingness to subject himself to a profile. He figured that the chances of Brady agreeing were a Hail Mary at best, but Brady returned Mark's call in summer 2014 and kept on returning his calls through epic Patriots Super Bowl victory and defeat, and a scandal involving Brady--Deflategate--whose grip on sports media was as profound as its true significance was ridiculous. So began a four-year odyssey that took Mark Leibovich deeper inside the NFL than anyone has gone before. From the owners' meeting to the draft to the sidelines of crucial games, he takes in the show at the elbow of everyone from Brady to big-name owners to the cordially despised NFL Commissioner, Roger Goodell. Ultimately, BIG GAME is a chronicle of "peak football"--the high point of the sport's economic success and cultural dominance, but also the time when the dark side began to show. It is an era of explosive revenue growth, but also one of creeping existential fear. Players have long joked that NFL stands for "not for long," but as the true impact of concussions becomes inescapable background noise, it's increasingly difficult to enjoy the simple glory of football without the buzz-kill of its obvious consequences. And that was before Donald Trump. In 2016, Mark's day job caught up with him, and the NFL slammed headlong into America's culture wars. Big Game is a journey through an epic storm. Through it all, Leibovich always keeps one eye on Tom Brady and his beloved Patriots, through to the 2018 Super Bowl. Pro football, this hilarious and enthralling book proves, may not be the sport America needs, but it is most definitely the sport we deserve.

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I Feel Like Going On - Ray Lewis Cover Art

I Feel Like Going On

I Feel Like Going On Life, Game, and Glory by Ray Lewis

In this New York Times bestselling memoir, NFL legend Ray Lewis—Baltimore Ravens linebacker and one of the greatest defensive players in football history—shares an unflinching account of his troubled childhood, his rise to athletic greatness, the storm that threatened to ruin his NFL career, and the devastating injury that nearly cost him a final moment of glory. Ray Lewis is undeniably one of the biggest names in football—not only for his seventeen years in the NFL, but also for the dramatic events that nearly brought his career to a halt in 2000. In his memoir, Lewis shares honest accounts of his difficult childhood and delves into the anguish and controversy that he found away from the game. But these heartbreaks gave him the courage to trust in God and continue his dream to play for the NFL and win the Super Bowl. From a rookie player to a football veteran, Lewis has experienced everything imaginable during his football career, and has become one of the best defensive players in the history of the NFL. I Feel Like Going On is the story of his incredible journey, and a sincere look at the most popular sport in America from one of football’s most revered players.

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Death to the BCS - Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter & Jeff Passan Cover Art

Death to the BCS

Death to the BCS The Definitive Case Against the Bowl Championship Series by Dan Wetzel, Josh Peter & Jeff Passan

A team of award-winning sports reporters takes down the Great Satan of college sports: the Bowl Championship Series. Every college sport picks its champion by a postseason tournament, except for one: Division I-A football. Instead of a tournament, fans are subjected to the Bowl Championship Series, an arcane mix of polling and mathematical rankings that results in just two teams playing for the championship. It is, without a doubt, the most hated institution in all of sports. A recent Sports Illustrated poll found that more than 90 percent of sports fans oppose the BCS, yet this system has remained in place for more than a decade. Built upon top-notch investigative reporting, Death to the BCS at last reveals the truth about this monstrous entity and offers a simple solution for fixing it. Death to the BCS includes findings from interviews with power players, as well as research into federal tax records, Congressional testimony, and private contracts, revealing: ?The truth behind the "Cartel"-the anonymous suits who run the BCS and who profit handsomely by protecting it ?The flawed math and corruption that determine which teams participate in the national championship ?How the system hurts competition by perpetuating "cupcake" schedules ?How "mid-major" teams are systematically denied a chance to play for the championship ?How a comprehensive sixteen-team playoff plan can solve the problem while enhancing profitability The first book to lay out the unseemly inner workings of the BCS in full detail, Death to the BCS is a rousing manifesto for bringing fairness back to one of our most beloved sports.

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The Last Headbangers - Kevin Cook Cover Art

The Last Headbangers

The Last Headbangers NFL Football in the Rowdy, Reckless '70s: the Era that Created Modern Sports by Kevin Cook

The inside story of the most colorful decade in NFL history—pro football’s raging, hormonal, hairy, druggy, immortal adolescence. Between the Immaculate Reception in 1972 and The Catch in 1982, pro football grew up. In 1972, Steelers star Franco Harris hitchhiked to practice. NFL teams roomed in skanky motels. They played on guts, painkillers, legal steroids, fury, and camaraderie. A decade later, Joe Montana’s gleamingly efficient 49ers ushered in a new era: the corporate, scripted, multibillion-dollar NFL we watch today. Kevin Cook’s rollicking chronicle of this pivotal decade draws on interviews with legendary players—Harris, Montana, Terry Bradshaw, Roger Staubach, Ken “Snake” Stabler—to re-create their heroics and off-field carousing. He shows coaches John Madden and Bill Walsh outsmarting rivals as Monday Night Football redefined sports’ place in American life. Celebrating the game while lamenting the physical toll it took on football’s greatest generation, Cook diagrams the NFL’s transformation from second-tier sport into national obsession.

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Collision Low Crossers - Nicholas Dawidoff Cover Art

Collision Low Crossers

Collision Low Crossers A Year Inside the Turbulent World of NFL Football by Nicholas Dawidoff

An unrivaled portrait of day-to-day life in the NFL, as told by the writer who was there.  "Riveting ... an instant classic." — New York Times Book Review By spending a year with the New York Jets, Nicholas Dawidoff entered a mysterious and private world with its own rituals and language. Equal parts Paper Lion , Moneyball , Friday Night Lights , and The Office , this absorbing, funny, and vivid narrative gets to the heart of a massive and stressful collective endeavor.  Here is football in many faces: the polarizing, brilliant, and hilarious head coach; the general manager, whose job is to support (and suppress) the irrepressible coach; the defensive coaches and their in-house rivals, the offensive coaches; and of course the players.  Wise safeties, brooding linebackers, high-strung cornerbacks, enthusiastic rookies, and a well-read nose tackle: they make up a strange and complex family. Dawidoff makes an emblematic NFL season come alive for fans and nonfans alike in a book about football that will forever change the way people watch and think about the sport.

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Fourth and Long - John U. Bacon Cover Art

Fourth and Long

Fourth and Long The Fight for the Soul of College Football by John U. Bacon

From New York Times bestselling author and Michigan football expert John Back, an analysis of the state of college football: Why we love the game, what is at risk, and the fight to save it. In search of the sport’s old ideals amid the roaring flood of hypocrisy and greed, bestselling author John U. Bacon embedded himself in four college football programs—Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, and Northwestern—and captured the oldest, biggest, most storied league, the Big Ten, at its tipping point. He sat in as coaches dissected game film, he ate dinner at training tables, and he listened in locker rooms. He talked with tailgating fans and college presidents, and he spent months in the company of the gifted young athletes who play the game. Fourth and Long reveals intimate scenes behind closed doors, from a team’s angry face-off with their athletic director to a defensive lineman acing his master’s exams in theoretical math. It captures the private moment when coach Urban Meyer earned the devotion of Ohio State’s Buckeyes on their way to a perfect season. It shows Michigan’s athletic department endangering the very traditions that distinguish the college game from all others. And it re-creates the euphoria of the Northwestern Wildcats winning their first bowl game in decades. Most unforgettably, Fourth and Long finds what the national media missed in the ugly aftermath of Penn State’s tragic scandal: the unheralded story of players who joined forces with Coach Bill O’Brien to save the university’s treasured program—and with it, a piece of the game’s soul. This is the work of a writer in love with an old game—a game he sees at the precipice. Bacon’s deep knowledge of sports history and his sensitivity to the tribal subcultures of the college game power this elegy to a beloved and endangered American institution.

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The Cost of These Dreams - Wright Thompson Cover Art

The Cost of These Dreams

The Cost of These Dreams Sports Stories and Other Serious Business by Wright Thompson

The instant New York Times bestseller! From one of America's most beloved sportswriters and the bestselling author of Pappyland , a collection of true stories about the dream of greatness and its cost in the world of sports. "Wright Thompson's stories are so full of rich characters, bad actors, heroes, drama, suffering, courage, conflict, and vivid detail that I sometimes thinks he's working my side of the street - the world of fiction." —John Grisham There is only one Wright Thompson. He is, as they say, famous if you know who he is: his work includes the most read articles in the history of ESPN (and it's not even close) and has been anthologized in the Best American Sports Writing series ten times, and he counts John Grisham and Richard Ford among his ardent admirers (see back of book). But to say his pieces are about sports, while true as far as it goes, is like saying Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove is a book about a cattle drive. Wright Thompson figures people out. He jimmies the lock to the furnaces inside the people he profiles and does an analysis of the fuel that fires their ambition. Whether it be Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods or Pat Riley or Urban Meyer, he strips the away the self-serving myths and fantasies to reveal his characters in full. There are fascinating common denominators: it may not be the case that every single great performer or coach had a complex relationship with his father, but it can sure seem that way. And there is much marvelous local knowledge: about specific sports, and times and places, and people. Ludicrously entertaining and often powerfully moving, The Cost of These Dreams is an ode to the reporter's art, and a celebration of true greatness and the high price that it exacts.

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My Conference Can Beat Your Conference - Paul Finebaum & Gene Wojciechowski Cover Art

My Conference Can Beat Your Conference

My Conference Can Beat Your Conference Why the SEC Still Rules College Football by Paul Finebaum & Gene Wojciechowski

An all-access pass into the powerhouse teams and passionate fanbases of the legendary Southeastern Conference, from one of the most influential men in college football: ESPN’s Paul Finebaum. Proud owner of 14 prestigious college football programs, producing seven consecutive national championships, twelve NFL first round draft choices, and a budget that crushes the GDP of Samoa, the Southeastern Conference collects the most coveted ratings, rankings, and revenue of any conference in college football. With its pantheon of illustrious alumni like Bear Bryant, Herschel Walker, Peyton Manning, and Nick Saban, the SEC is the altar at which millions of Americans worship every Saturday, from Texas to Kentucky to Florida. If the SEC is a religion, its deity is radio talk-show host Paul Finebaum. In My Conference Can Beat Your Conference, Finebaum, chronicles the rise of the SEC and his own unlikely path to college football fame. Finebaum offers his blunt wisdom on everything from Joe Paterno and the Penn State scandal to the relevancy of Alabama quarterback AJ McCarron’s girlfriend, and chronicles the best of his beloved callers, and the worst of his haters. The Mouth of the South holds nothing back: SEC Dominance: From seven consecutive national championships to the truth about why the Big Ten, ACC, and Pac-12 can’t keep up. College Football Rivalries: An insider’s look at the hatred and history that fuels the Iron Bowl and separates the SEC from every other conference on earth. Coaching Legends: Unfiltered stories and sharp analysis of icons like Bear Bryant and Nick Saban, and what really makes them tick. The Infamous Callers: Meet the personalities who make up the heart of Finebaum’s show—from the devoted to the deranged, including the man who poisoned Toomer’s Corner. An Unlikely Journey: The story of how Paul Finebaum went from a kid who never played a down to ESPN and the most powerful voice in the sport.

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Brady vs Manning - Gary Myers Cover Art

Brady vs Manning

Brady vs Manning The Untold Story of the Rivalry That Transformed the NFL by Gary Myers

New York Times Bestseller  From Acclaimed sports journalist Gary Myers comes the definitive inside account of the greatest rivalry in NFL history Tom Brady and Peyton Manning are perhaps the two greatest quarterbacks of all time. They are living legends who have come to embody the quarterback position and shape an entire generation of the NFL. They have also been fierce rivals every step of the way, and their many epic duels have not only ranked among the best and most exciting games ever played, they have fundamentally shaped the lives of and careers of both men. But for all their shared brilliance, they are a study in contrasts. Tom is the underdog turned ultimate winner, an unheralded draft pick who went on to win a miraculous Super Bowl and become the leader of one of the NFL’s greatest dynasties. He is as firmly associated with big game brilliance as anyone who has ever played. Meanwhile Peyton was born into NFL royalty and a mountain of outsized expectations, yet somehow lived up to and exceeded all the hype, claiming virtually every passing record along his path to football immortality. The contrast in greatness—between the overachieving underdog and the crown prince of football, between postseason brilliance and statistical dominance—has served as an endless source of fascination for fans and media, and over the years as the two players have faced off again and again in classic games, the argument has only intensified. But until now, there has never been a definitive treatment of the debate that tells the real story. What do Tom and Peyton actually think of each other? What do their coaches think of them? What about teammates and opposing players? What are they like behind closed doors and in the locker room, and how does that influence their careers? How did their vastly different upbringings shape them, and how has each handled the injuries, setbacks and defeats they’ve dealt with over their careers? In this extraordinary book, veteran NFL correspondent Gary Myers tackles this subject from every angle and with unprecedented access and insight, drawing on a huge number of never-before-heard interviews with Brady and Manning, their coaches, their families, and those who have played with them and against them. The result is a remarkable collection of the most entertaining and revealing stories ever told about Peyton and Tom, from how they developed their vastly different leadership styles, to the unlikely friendship they’ve built over the years, to their respective exploits as locker room pranksters. Wildly entertaining and deeply thought-provoking, Brady vs Manning is essential reading for anyone who truly wants to understand these extraordinary players.

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Next Man Up - John Feinstein Cover Art

Next Man Up

Next Man Up A Year Behind the Lines in Today's NFL by John Feinstein

A behind-the-scenes tour of the ups and downs of an NFL season focuses on the Baltimore Ravens and reveals the lesser-known aspects of the professional league, from the dangerous conditions under which athletes are expected to train to the unrelenting pressures faced by coaches and players.  In the NFL there is only one certainty: that every day, someone will have to be the Next Man Up. Football is an unrelentingly punishing sport, played and practiced at undiminished intensity, and it devours its players. Confronting injuries, trades, and the grim reality of competition, every NFL team prepares constantly for the likelihood—the certainty—that even franchise players can go down at any time. And someone new must be ready, trained, and primed to step in at the highest level.  Bestselling sportswriter John Feinstein persuaded one NFL team to lift the extraordinary secrecy that shrouds the sport and let him see how a team operates at the closest level. One team let him join every practice, every coaches' meeting, every players' gathering, every strategy debate. From the give-and-take of draft day, into the grinder of summer training camps, and from 100-degree practice games to the last game in frigid conditions, Feinstein reveals how a football team works—or fails to work—as no writer has done before.  Next Man Up unveils rituals (what a coach tells a player at the moment he cuts him); rules (the inanities of league-appointed "uniform Nazis"); conflicts (the scouts vs. the coaches, the general managers vs. the agents, the offense vs. the defense, the special teams coaches vs. everybody); money (how much a journeyman makes, and how his life differs from the multi-million-dollar-a-year star players)-every nuance of a team's life, from the owner's goals to the coach's day-to-day travails to the feeling of the sleet-soaked ball in the hands of a receiver on artificial turf.  The access John Feinstein enjoyed allows him to discuss with equal understanding the owner's management strategy, the coaches' and coordinators' plans for each new game, and how it all affects the players themselves. Anyone who loves football—any team, in any era—will savor the thousands of details revealed here for the first time, and the extraordinary drama that goes into following week after week, the most sensational sport in America.

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Take Your Eye Off the Ball 2.0 - Pat Kirwan & David Seigerman Cover Art

Take Your Eye Off the Ball 2.0

Take Your Eye Off the Ball 2.0 How to Watch Football by Knowing Where to Look by Pat Kirwan & David Seigerman

Renowned NFL analysts' tips to make football more accessible, colorful, and compelling than ever before More and more football fans are watching the NFL each week, but many of them don't know exactly what they should be watching. What does the offense's formation tell you about the play that's about to be run? When a quarterback throws a pass toward the sideline and the wide receiver cuts inside, which player is to blame? Why does a defensive end look like a Hall of Famer one week and a candidate for the practice squad the next? These questions and more are addressed in Take Your Eye Off the Ball 2.0 , a book that takes readers deep inside the perpetual chess match between offense and defense. This book provides clear and simple explanations to the intricacies and nuances that affect the outcomes of every NFL game. This updated edition contains recent innovations from the 2015 NFL season.

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Coaching Confidential - Gary Myers Cover Art

Coaching Confidential

Coaching Confidential Inside the Fraternity of NFL Coaches by Gary Myers

A behind-the-scenes look at the high-pressure lives of NFL head coaches Coaching Confidential chronicles a year in the life of an NFL head coach. But not just one head coach. A composite portrait is drawn through interviews with at least 20 current and former head coaches (including Super Bowl winners such as Bill Parcells, Tom Coughlin, Jimmy Johnson, Tony Dungy, Sean Payton, Mike Shanahan, Dick Vermeil, Mike Holmgren, Brian Billick, and Joe Gibbs), taking us through the professional and personal challenges of the job. This book covers the draft, free agency, big trades, training camp, family crisis, player troubles, coaching relationships with members of the staff, coach-owner dynamics, rivalries, Xs and Os, the playoffs--all the way to the Super Bowl.      Just getting to Sunday is almost a relief for NFL head coaches. It's during that three-hour window 16 days a year when they can simply concentrate on what they do best, which is trying to win football games. But the job is, of course, much more than that.

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Tim Tebow - Belmont & Belcourt Biographies Cover Art

Tim Tebow

Tim Tebow An Unauthorized Biography by Belmont & Belcourt Biographies

Tim Tebow is one of the most talked about athletes of all-time. Everybody seems to have an opinion about him – especially his religious beliefs. But in order to truly understand Tim Tebow, you must first understand where he came from. Tim Tebow: An Unauthorized Biography , explores Tebow’s upbringing, his high school and college football career, and details his breakthrough into the NFL – all the way through his trade to the New York Jets . “Tebow-mania” has fans and critics alike questioning his motives and looking for where God and his career will take him next. By reading this book you will find out where it all started and learn why so many fans are “Tebowing” alongside their new national hero. From family to football to the future, all you need to know about Tim Tebow is right here, right now, in the most up-to-date coverage of Tim Tebow’s life. This book also includes all of Tim Tebow’s college and professional football statistics.

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When the Game Stands Tall - Neil Hayes, John Madden & Bob Larson Cover Art

When the Game Stands Tall

When the Game Stands Tall The Story of the De La Salle Spartans and Football's Longest Winning Streak by Neil Hayes, John Madden & Bob Larson

De La Salle High School in Concord, California, is home to perhaps the greatest dynasty in sports history. At age 23, Coach Bob Ladouceur launched a legend, "The Streak," with no teaching or head-coaching experience, and with his teams amassed the highest winning percentage in all of football history with 138 consecutive victories. This book takes readers behind the scenes, closely following individual players, as Ladouceur guides his team through the most daunting schedule in school history, the 2002 season. Numerous interviews with major-league coaches such as Bill Walsh, Steve Mariucci, and John Gruden show the depth of respect accorded to Ladouceur and his methods and philosophies. Written with full cooperation from the coach and including dozens of photographs, this book is perfect for anyone interested in the factors behind phenomenal team success.

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The Road Back - Star Tribune Cover Art

The Road Back

The Road Back Adrian Peterson's path to recovery and domination in the NFL by Star Tribune

Adrian Peterson had major surgery on his left knee on Dec. 30, 2011, making it unlikely the Vikings’ All-Pro running back would be ready for the start of the 2012 NFL season. He vowed to return better than ever, even as his team tried to temper enthusiasm. Over the past year, Star Tribune writers chronicled Peterson’s offseason recovery, his impatient training camp, his return to the field and the remarkable second half of his season. The Road Back brings together the Star Tribune's exclusive coverage of Peterson's pursuit of  NFL records and efforts to lead his team into the playoffs.

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I Think Therefore I Play - Andrea Pirlo & Alessandro Alciato Cover Art

I Think Therefore I Play

I Think Therefore I Play by Andrea Pirlo & Alessandro Alciato

Andrea Pirlo is one of the finest footballers of his generation - a World Cup and Champions League winning playmaker who has redefined his position at the base of midfield, and one of the most deadly free-kick takers the game has known. This is his story, in his words. It is written with a level of humour and insight which confound his image as a dead-eyed assassin on the field of play. All the big names are in there: Lippi, Ancelotti, Conte, Maldini, Shevchenko, Seedorf, Buffon, Kaka, Nesta, Balotelli, Costacurta, Gattuso, Berlusconi and Ronaldo ("the real one"). But they're not always in their work clothes. We hear Berlusconi playing the piano and telling "various types of jokes" at Milan's training ground. We see Pirlo and Daniele De Rossi drawing Nesta's ire as they take him on a mystery tour of the German countryside in a hire car days before a World Cup semi-final. And we smell the aftermath of Filippo Inzaghi's graphically-described pre-match routine. With the 2014 World Cup being his last international tournament, this is a timely salute to a special talent who may yet have one final chapter left to write.

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The QB - Bruce Feldman Cover Art

The QB

The QB The Making of Modern Quarterbacks by Bruce Feldman

With unparalleled access to Heisman Trophy-winning phenom Johnny Manziel, Bruce Feldman has written a modern-day tale about the making of the next superstars in football's most important position: the quarterback.   In the world of modern football, with NFL teams worth more than a billion dollars, no position defines a franchise like the quarterback. The QB is the story of a year in the making of those star players, and of the most significant year in QB development in sport’s history… with the meteoric rise of various quarterback gurus finally coming to light. George Whitfield, profiled in the New Yorker and called the “Quarterback Whisperer,” gets a regular spot on ESPN’s College GameDay, Trent Dilfer, former Super Bowl quarterback, starts his own qb business, Steve Clarkson, another qb maker, gets profiled on 60 minutes, among many others. It is also the year 5’10” Russell Wilson wins the Super Bowl and for the first time in over 60 years a sub-6-foot QB, Johnny Manziel, gets drafted in the first round, forcing NFL power brokers to re-examine how they look at the position—and the game.          To tell the story of all that goes on to create the perfect quarterback, bestselling author Bruce Feldman gained unique access to "Johnny Football" (that's Johnny Manziel), George Whitfield and many other players in what has become a specialized and high-stakes business. In the past decade the boom of the private quarterback-coach business, with its pageant-world-for-boys vibe, has changed the position and the game. The QB tells the story of the interlocking paths of the most fascinating characters involved in this secretive world, examining how advanced analysis has taken root in football. Manziel’s portrait is the most intimate look at him yet, detailing all his talents and antics.  His guru is a man who has come to be known for making QBs--George Whitfield, unparalleled in the business. And then there is Trent Dilfer, the quarterback who never could get to the superstar level, despite winning the Super Bowl.  He is the Salieri to Manziel's Mozart. There is the computer/brain analysis company trying to quantify how playmakers think, the biomechanics expert who saved Drew Brees’s career, and many more fascinating behind-the-scenes looks into this world. Never before has the game so relied on the development of the quarterback. In The QB , the stories of these men illustrate how high the stakes of the quarterback’s game really are, taking readers on a compelling journey into the heart of America's beloved game.

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Football Scouting Methods - Steve Belichick Cover Art

Football Scouting Methods

Football Scouting Methods by Steve Belichick

Reprint of the 1962 edition. Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software. "Considered the bible of scouting techniques" according to the Los Angeles Times, Football Scouting Methods explains the basic scouting strategies and insights of author Steve Belichick. He was widely viewed as the ablest football scout of his time and coached at the U.S. Naval Academy for 33 years; his son is New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick, a three-time Super Bowl winner. When Steve Belichick died in November 2005, the New York Times headline cited him as "Coach Who Wrote the Book on Scouting," and quoted Houston Texans General Manager Charley Casserly calling Football Scouting Methods "the best book on scouting he had ever read." Joe Bellino, Navy's Heisman Trophy winner in 1960, told the Times that Steve Belichick "was a genius. On Monday nights, he would give us his scouting reports, and even though we were playing powerhouses, I always felt we were prepared because he found a way for us to win." In recent years Football Scouting Methods has been one of the top ten most sought out-of-print books; used copies have been quite scarce. This reissue edition makes the original 1962 text available once again in exact facsimile. The book covers how to scout opponents, recognize defenses, analyze offenses, discover "tip-offs" that reveal the opponent's plays, compose a useful report, self-scout, and conduct postgame analysis. "Steve Belichick taught many younger men how to scout and how to watch film and how to prepare their teams for the next week's game," David Halberstam noted in the Washington Post, and his best student was his own son Bill Belichick, "one of whose greatest skills as a coach to this day remains his ability to analyze other teams, figuring out both their strengths and their vulnerabilities, and shrewdly deciding how to take away from them that which they most want to do." When CBS asked Bill Belichick to name his favorite book, he replied "Well, I've got to go with my dad's. Football Scouting Methods. I'd have to go with that."

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Quarterback - John Feinstein Cover Art

Quarterback

Quarterback Inside the Most Important Position in the National Football League by John Feinstein

From legendary sportswriter and #1 New York Times bestselling author John Feinstein, a deep dive into the most coveted and hallowed position in the NFL. "Another must-read from a master of long-form sports journalism."-- Booklist , starred review In the mighty National Football League, one player becomes the face of a franchise, one player receives all the accolades and all the blame, and one player's hand will guide the rise or fall of an entire team's season--and the dreams of millions of fans. There are thirty-two starting quarterbacks in the NFL, and their lives are built around pressure, stardom, and incredible talent. In his most insightful book yet, John Feinstein shows readers what it's really like to play the glory position and to live that life--mapping out a journey that runs from college stardom to the NFL draft to taking command of the huddle and marching a team down the field with a nation of fans cheering. Centering on five NFL starting quarterbacks--Alex Smith, Andrew Luck, Joe Flacco, Ryan Fitzpatrick, and Doug Williams-- Quarterback provides readers with incredible inside access to the locker room, huddle, and heat of battle. Through spectacular moments and embarrassing defeats, this is as close as most of us will ever come to experiencing life in the most glamorous position in America's greatest game.

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Barça: The Making of the Greatest Team In the World (Enhanced Edition) - Graham Hunter Cover Art

Barça: The Making of the Greatest Team In the World (Enhanced Edition)

Barça: The Making of the Greatest Team In the World (Enhanced Edition) by Graham Hunter

BARCELONA are the greatest football team in the world, the greatest for a generation and possibly the greatest of all time.  This is the untold inside story of how the best and most loved football team in the world came to redefine how the game is played.  We start with the 2011 Champions League final at Wembley, the game that ended the debate about whether Barcelona were the greatest team in the world and began a new one: are they the best ever?  We are inside the winning dressing room and inside the mind of the team's coach, Pep Guardiola.  From there, the focus is on each of the iconic personalities of this team, telling its story through them, from their genesis in the late 1980s to their coronation in London: Guardiola; his mentor, Johan Cruyff; Xavi; Andres Iniesta and Lionel Messi, perhaps the greatest footballer of all time. This enhanced edition contains 17 videos, hosted by the book's author Graham Hunter.

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Their Life's Work - Gary M. Pomerantz Cover Art

Their Life's Work

Their Life's Work The Brotherhood of the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers, Then and Now by Gary M. Pomerantz

“The definitive book of the 1970s Pittsburgh Steelers” (Scott Brown, ESPN), Their Life’s Work is a triumphant yet intimate literary sports book that—through exquisite reportage, love, and honesty—tells the full story of the best team to ever play the game. The Pittsburgh Steelers of the 1970s won an unprecedented and unmatched four Super Bowls in six years. A dozen of those Steelers players, coaches, and executives have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, and three decades later their names echo in popular memory: “Mean” Joe Greene, Terry Bradshaw, Franco Harris, Mike Webster, Jack Lambert, Lynn Swann, and John Stallworth. In ways exhilarating and heartbreaking, they define not only the brotherhood of sports but those elements of the game that engage tens of millions of Americans: its artistry and its brutality. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, Their Life’s Work is a richly textured story of a team and a sport, what the game gave these men, and what the game took. It gave fame, wealth, and, above all, a brotherhood of players, twelve of whom died before turning sixty. To a man, they said they’d do it again, all of it. They bared the soul of the game to Gary Pomerantz, and he captured it wondrously. “Here is a book as hard-hitting and powerful as the ‘Steel Curtain’ dynasty that Pomerantz depicts so deftly. It’s the NFL’s version of The Boys of Summer , with equal parts triumph and melancholy. Pomerantz’s writing is strong, straightforward, funny, sentimental, and blunt. It’s as working class and gritty as the men he writes about” ( The Tampa Tribune , Top 10 Sports Books of the Year).

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Playmakers - Mike Florio Cover Art

Playmakers

Playmakers How the NFL Really Works (And Doesn't) by Mike Florio

The “riveting” (Al Michaels) story of a modern NFL that can’t get out of its own way—and can’t stop making money In recent decades, the NFL has simultaneously become an athletic, financial, and cultural powerhouse—and a League that can’t seem to go more than a few weeks without a scandal. Whether it’s about domestic violence, performance-enhancing drugs, racism, or head trauma, the NFL always seems to be in some kind of trouble. Yet no matter the drama, the TV networks keep showing games, the revenue keeps rising, and the viewers keep tuning in. How can a sports league—or any organization—operate this way? Why do the negative stories keep happening, and why don’t they ever seem to affect the bottom line? In this wide-ranging book, Mike Florio takes readers from the boardroom to the locker room, from draft day to the Super Bowl, answering these questions and more, and showing what really goes on in the sport that America can’t seem to quit. Packed with new insights and reporting on scandals past and present, this book will be the talk of the League—whether the League likes it or not.

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The Boys of Riverside - Thomas Fuller Cover Art

The Boys of Riverside

The Boys of Riverside A Deaf Football Team and a Quest for Glory by Thomas Fuller

NAMED A BEST BOOK BY BOOK RIOT , AND MORE! • The incredible story of an all-deaf high school football team’s triumphant climb from underdog to undefeated, their inspirational brotherhood, a fascinating portrait of deafness in America, and the indefatigable head coach who spearheaded the team, by New York Times reporter and Page One Correspondent, Thomas Fuller. " The Boys of Riverside is another example of how anyone can achieve their dreams, making what appears impossible, possible.” —Marlee Matlin, Academy Award winner "Remarkable"— Wall Street Journal • "Narrative nonfiction at its finest, filled with drama, detail and action."— Los Angeles Times  • " Inspiring." — Parade.com In November 2021, an obscure email from the California Department of Education landed in New York Times reporter, Thomas Fuller’s, inbox. The football team at the California School for the Deaf in Riverside, a state-run school with only 168 high school students, was having an undefeated season. After years of covering war, wildfires, pandemic, and mass shootings, Fuller was captivated by the story of this group of high school boys. It was uplifting. During the gloom of the pandemic, it was a happy story. It was a sports story but not an ordinary one, built on the chemistry between a group of underestimated boys and their superhero advocate coach, Keith Adams, a deaf former athlete himself. The team, and Adams, tackled the many stereotypes and seemed to be succeeding. Fuller packed his bags and drove seven hours to the Riverside campus. The Boys of Riverside looks back at the historic 2021 and 2022 seasons in which the California School for the Deaf chased history. It follows the personal journeys of their dynamic deaf head coach, and a student who spent the majority of the season sleeping in his father’s car in the Target parking lot. It tells the story of a fiercely committed player who literally played through a broken leg in order not to miss a crucial game, as well as myriad other heart-wrenching and uplifting narratives of players who found common purpose. Through their eyes, Fuller reveals a portrait of high school athletics, inspiring camaraderie, and deafness in America.

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Billion-Dollar Ball - Gilbert M. Gaul Cover Art

Billion-Dollar Ball

Billion-Dollar Ball A Journey Through the Big-Money Culture of College Football by Gilbert M. Gaul

•  A Boston Globe Best Book of 2015  • “A penetrating examination of how the elite college football programs have become ‘giant entertainment businesses that happened to do a little education on the side.’” — Mark Kram , The New York Times Two-time Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist Gilbert M. Gaul offers a riveting and sometimes shocking look inside the money culture of college football and how it has come to dominate a surprising number of colleges and universities.  Over the past decade college football has not only doubled in size, but its elite programs have become a $2.5-billion-a-year entertainment business, with lavishly paid coaches, lucrative television deals, and corporate sponsors eager to slap their logos on everything from scoreboards to footballs and uniforms. Profit margins among the top football schools range from 60% to 75%—results that dwarf those of such high-profile companies as Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft—yet thanks to the support of their football-mad representatives in Congress, teams aren’t required to pay taxes. In most cases, those windfalls are not passed on to the universities themselves, but flow directly back into their athletic departments. College presidents have been unwilling or powerless to stop a system that has spawned a wildly profligate infrastructure of coaches, trainers, marketing gurus, and a growing cadre of bureaucrats whose sole purpose is to ensure that players remain academically eligible to play. From the University of Oregon’s lavish $42 million academic center for athletes to Alabama coach Nick Saban’s $7 million paycheck—ten times what the school pays its president, and 70 times what a full-time professor there earns—Gaul examines in depth the extraordinary financial model that supports college football and the effect it has had not only on other athletic programs but on academic ones as well. What are the consequences when college football coaches are the highest paid public employees in over half the states in an economically troubled country, or when football players at some schools receive ten times the amount of scholarship awards that academically gifted students do?  Billion-Dollar Ball considers these and many other issues in a compelling account of how an astonishingly wealthy sports franchise has begun to reframe campus values and distort the fundamental academic mission of our universities.

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American Kings - Seth Wickersham Cover Art

American Kings

American Kings A Biography of the Quarterback by Seth Wickersham

Pull back the curtain on the most powerful position in all of sports. The New York Times bestselling author of It's Better to be Feared examines football's QB lifecycle: high school, college, the NFL, retirement—and all that comes with it. "A MUST BUY" — New York Times / The Athletic A Boston Globe and NPR pick for Best Books of 2025 New York Book Festival • General Nonfiction Winner *** The Instant New York Times bestseller *** "An instant classic—not just a great sports book but a great cultural history." —Jonathan Eig, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of King: A Life The quarterback: the American equivalent of royalty, long glamorized, mythologized, and worshipped. Still, long before the Super Bowl trophies, massive contracts, brand deals, and millions of social media followers comes the dream. From the backyard to Pop Warner, from high school to college, from the NFL to the Hall of Fame, becoming the country's ultimate idol requires single-minded focus while navigating a maze of bad breaks, insecurities, jealousy, pressure, and fame. Long known as the outsider's guide into this elite world, Seth Wickersham's fresh reporting goes deep into the quarterback journey, measuring the distance between what the men who have traveled it expected and what they found at the end of the road. Through unprecedented access into the lives of dozens of quarterbacks and generational greats such as Johnny Unitas, John Elway, Peyton Manning, Warren Moon, Steve Young, and others, as well as those figures striving to be remembered, like Caleb Williams and Arch Manning, Wickersham reveals how this one position has become emblematic of success in American life. As an inside look into a uniquely American job and a uniquely American obsession with football, American Kings is a must-read for sports fans and anyone who wants to understand what the price of ambition tells us about the quest for achievement and status.

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Fantasy Football for Smart People: Daily Fantasy Pros Reveal Their Money-Making Secrets - Jonathan Bales Cover Art

Fantasy Football for Smart People: Daily Fantasy Pros Reveal Their Money-Making Secrets

Fantasy Football for Smart People: Daily Fantasy Pros Reveal Their Money-Making Secrets by Jonathan Bales

Fantasy Football for Smart People: Daily Fantasy Pros Reveal Their Money-Making Secrets is the first book to truly dig deep inside the minds of daily fantasy football's most lucrative players--the ones raking in full-time salaries playing the game you love. With interviews from headchopper, Al_Smizzle, PrimeTime420, dinkpiece, naapstermaan, MrTuttle05, and others, you'll learn exactly how the experts go about researching, projecting players, and creating their daily fantasy sports lineups each week. In addition, Daily Fantasy Pros Reveal Their Money-Making Secrets contains chapter-by-chapter commentary and analysis from author Jonathan Bales and Top-10-ranked daily fantasy pro Peter Jennings, a.k.a. CSURAM88. With unprecedented access to the strategies used by the world's top players, you'll learn how professional daily fantasy footballers are really cashing in...and how you can too.

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College Football Schemes and Techniques - Matt Zeigler Cover Art

College Football Schemes and Techniques

College Football Schemes and Techniques by Matt Zeigler

Matt Zeigler's College Football Schemes and Techniques explores offensive, defensive and special teams methods utilized on the collegiate level. Coaches, players and fans can learn the schemes and techniques of some of the best programs in college football. Coaches with experience in every major conference are the primary sources for CFST, including the SEC, ACC, Big 10, Big 12, Big East and PAC 12, plus the NFL and CFL. •Defensively, CFST reveals how Alabama Head Coach Nick Saban wins championships by shutting down an offense with the unique schemes and techniques that comprise 'Buster Coverage. Al Groh and Bill Belichick's insight on the flexibility of the 3-4 Defense is also examined. •The Front 7 philosophy of defensive guru Monte Kiffin inspired Alabama's Lance Thompson and is also included, along with defensive principals that Brent Pry learned under legendary Bud Foster at Virginia Tech. Florida State Assistant Sal Sunseri's pass rush system is also featured. •A 'Game Week' practice system established by NFL Hall-of-Famer Bill Walsh is used by Auburn Defensive Coordinator Brian VanGorder to organize practices, while also developing a game plan. •Offensively, CFST features North Carolina's Larry Fedora's no-huddle up-tempo spread attack; and Garrick McGee's multiple offense and UAB practice/QB development standards. As well as Joe Pendry's run blocking basics. •Michigan Offensive Coordinator Doug Nussmeier's quarterback development techniques and basic play-action passing scheme are included in the author's 'offensive package.' Another chapter breaks-down situational football preparation on offense/special teams that enabled Gene Chizik and Auburn to win the 2010 National Championship. •Florida State QBs Coach Dameyune Craig's methods for reading defenses and finding 'dead spots' in Cover 2 Zone are also examined. •For programs on any level that have suffered through years of underachievement, CFST provides the rebuilding methods of Vanderbilt Head Coach James Franklin. Franklin had previous experience in the ACC, Big 12 and NFL as an offensive assistant or coordinator. In just his first season at Vanderbilt in 2011, he built the Commodores into a bowl team for only the fifth time in 123 years!

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Goose - Tony Siragusa Cover Art

Goose

Goose The Outrageous Life and Times of a Football Guy by Tony Siragusa

A hugely popular and beloved football commentator and former player with the Indianapolis Colts and the Baltimore Ravens, Tony Siragusa offers his uncensored insider's look at the NFL and his hilarious take on life off the gridiron.   The New York Times called him a "modern-day John Madden." Tony Soprano called him "Frankie Cortese." His teammates called him "Goose." Whatever you call him, Tony Siragusa is larger than life in every possible sense, from his personality to his physique to his colorful career, hilarious stories, and bombastic take on life.          Goose is the book that Siragusa's fans have been clamoring for, to hear more from the Super Bowl champ-turned-commentator-turned-actor, who has brought his unmistakable style and intense love for life to every endeavor. In a memoir that is guaranteed to make you laugh, cheer, shake your head, laugh some more, and then think seriously, Siragusa offers stories, life lessons, and perspective gained from his unbelievable collection of experiences. He also offers a no-holds-barred look at the NFL, with locker room stories and surprising glimpses at the way things are done when the cameras (or the refs) aren't looking. His narratives range from hilarious anecdotes about his New Jersey childhood and wild college days, to behind-the-scenes glimpses at some of the greatest players in football history, to Goose's opinions about the current state of the NFL. And he shares them all with his signature love for life and uncensored insight.

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