Sports & Recreation : Football

No Excuses is not only illuminating and insightful, it is an extraordinary look inside one of football's greatest minds who has helped shape today's game. more...

Price: $10.95

If the National Football League is now a mammoth billion-dollar enterprise, it was certainly born into more humble circumstances. Indeed, it began in 1920 in an automobile showroom in Canton, Ohio, when a car dealer called together some owners of teams, mostly in the Midwest, to form a league. Unlike the lavish boardrooms in which NFL owners meet today, on this occasion the owners sat on the running boards of cars in the showroom and drank beer from buckets. A membership fee of $100 was set, but no one came up with any money. (As one of those present, George Halas, the legendary owner of the Chicago Bears, said, "I doubt that there was a hundred bucks in the room.") From such modest beginnings, pro football became far and away the most popular spectator sport in America. In Pigskin, Robert W. Peterson presents a lively and informative overview of the early years of pro football--from the late 1880s to the beginning of the television era. Peterson describes the colorful beginnings of the pro game and its outstanding teams (the Green Bay Packers, the New York Giants, the Chicago Bears, the Baltimore Colts), and the great games they played. Profiles of the most famous players of the era--including Pudge Heffelfinger (the first certifiable professional), Jim Thorpe, Red Grange, Bronko Nagurski, and Fritz Pollard (the NFL's first black star)--bring the history of the game to life. Peterson also takes us back to the roots of the pro game, showing how professionalism began when some stars for Yale, Harvard, and Princeton took money--under the table, of course--for their services to alma mater. By 1895, the money makers--still unacknowledged--had moved to amateur athletic associations in western Pennsylvania and subsequently into Ohio. After the NFL formed in 1920, pro football's popularity grew gradually but steadily. It burst into national prominence with the Bears-Redskins championship game of 1940. As one sportswriter put it: "The weather was perfect. So were the Bears. more...

Price: $19.95

"Fresh and funny… St. John has crafter a winner.” — Tony Horwitz, author of Confederates in the Attic In the life of every sports fan, there comes a moment of reckoning. It may happen when your team wins on a last-second field goal and you suddenly find yourself clenched in a loving embrace with a large hairy man you’ve never met. more...

Price: $13.95

Starting with the team's inaugural kickoff, this comprehensive guide offers a detailed history of the first 10 years of the Buffalo Bills football franchise. Founded in 1960 by Ralph Wilson, who still owns the team today, the Bills were one of the original members of the now-defunct American Football League. More than 100 photos--some never before made public and many taken by the team's official photographer, Robert Smith--display the excitement and success of the Bills' opening seasons. Complete game summaries from each year along with excerpts from interviews with players, coaches, and managers round out this must-have reference for any die-hard football fanatic. more...

Price: $17.95

Praised by sports fans and book critics alike, this book is a laugh-out-loud story about football, family, and marriage. Murphy's humor is relentless and his football anecdotes insightful in a story of kindness and humility in the typically macho world of sports. Print features. more...

Price: $10.95