Sports & Recreation : Football

An entertaining fusion of fact, legend, and lore, Notre Dame football has transcended the boundaries of the sport and the university to become a time-honored American tradition. For its legions of devoted fans and alumni, Talking Irish vividly captures it all: the exhilarating wins, the stunning defeats, the tumultuous coaching changes, and the celebrated mystique that surrounds this beloved football dynasty. With never-before-told anecdotes, this candid and revealing oral history -- the first ever written on Fighting Irish football -- is told in the words of more than 150 Notre Dame players, coaches, leading sports journalists, and school faculty. This rousing narrative begins in the 1940s, a decade after the death of the fabled Knute Rockne, and concludes five decades later, with the formidable exploits of Notre Dame football at the end of the twentieth century. more...

Price: $11.95

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. more...

Price: $25.00

The definitive biography of the visionary sportsman who brought us Australian Rules football. more...

Price: $26.35

Noted Washington Post sports reporter and columnist Mark Maske has written the Moneyball of professional football, a behind-the-scenes account of a year in the life of the on- and off-field competition between four of the NFL's bitterest rivals: the New York Giants, Washington Redskins, Philadelphia Eagles, and Dallas Cowboys. The NFL's NFC East is perhaps the most storied division in all of professional sports. The rivalries are ancient and bitter, the markets are sports mad, media saturated, and very impatient with failure, and the owners, coaches, and players include many of the most outsized egos in the game. How better, then, to understand the big competition and big business of pro football today than by spending a year with a behind-the-scenes pass in the cockpits of all four organizations, chronicling the strategy and tactics employed over the course of an unrelenting four-season struggle? To place the story of the NFC East within its larger context, Mark Maske has secured extraordinary access to the new league commissioner's office as well as that of the players association head, Gene Upshaw, and the most important agents in the game. But the heart of Maske's story is his relentlessly reported account of the view from the leadership level of each of these four franchises, all in their way struggling with dramatic personality conflicts and unexpected changes in personnel and fortune. The result is nirvana for sports fans, an engrossing ride through a competitive free-fire zone in which the pressure is unremitting and the punishment for failure is swift and sure. The NFL is the most successful professional sports league in America, and its influence on the culture enormous: Through the story of these four organizations locked in a steelcage match with one another over the course of this one year, Mark Maske takes the measure of this league in a way no one before has and few others could. more...

Price: $25.95

One of the nation's most successful football coaches shares the story of his life, from his childhood and the forces that shaped him, to his military service and his career at Notre Dame and South Carolina. more...

Price: $10.95