Special Collections

Belichick

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The definitive biography of the NFL’s most enigmatic, controversial, and yet successful coach Bill Belichick is perhaps the most fascinating figure in the NFL—the infamously dour face of one of the winningest franchises in sports. As head coach of the New England Patriots, he’s led the team to five Super Bowl championship trophies. In this revelatory and robust biography, readers will come to understand and see Belichick’s full life in football, from watching college games as a kid with his father, a Naval Academy scout, to orchestrating two Super Bowl–winning game plans as defensive coordinator for the Giants, to his dramatic leap to New England, where he has made history. Award-winning columnist and New York Times best-selling author Ian O’Connor delves into the mind of the man who has earned a place among coaching legends like Lombardi, Halas, and Paul Brown, presenting sides of Belichick that have been previously unexplored. O’Connor discovers how this legendary coach shaped the people he met and worked with in ways perhaps even Belichick himself doesn’t know. Those who follow and love pro football know Bill Belichick only as the hooded genius of the Patriots. But there is so much more—from the hidden tensions and deep layers to his relationship with Tom Brady to his sometimes frosty dealings with owner Robert Kraft to his ability to earn the unmitigated respect of his players—if not their affection. This is a man who has many facets and, ultimately, has created a notorious football dynasty. Based on exhaustive research and countless interviews, this book circles around Belichick to tell his full story for the first time, and presents an incisive portrait of a mastermind at work.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Gridiron Genius

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.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

The Blind Side

"Lewis has such a gift for storytelling... he writes as lucidly for sports fans as for those who read him for other reasons."--Janet Maslin, New York Times

When we first meet Michael Oher is one of thirteen children by a mother addicted to crack; he does not know his real name, his father, his birthday, or how to read or write. He takes up football, and school, after a rich, white, Evangelical family plucks him from the streets.

Then two great forces alter Oher: the family's love and the evolution of professional football itself into a game in which the quarterback must be protected at any cost. Our protagonist becomes the priceless package of size, speed, and agility necessary to guard the quarterback's greatest vulnerability: his blind side.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

The Truth About Aaron

The unvarnished true story of the tragic life and death of Aaron Hernandez, the college All-American and New England Patriots star convicted of murder, told by one of the few people who knew him best, his brother. To football fans, Aaron Hernandez was a superstar in the making. A standout at the University of Florida, he helped the Gators win the national title in 2008. Drafted by the New England Patriots, in his second full season with the team he and fellow Patriots’ tight end Rob Gronkowski set records for touchdowns and yardage, and with Tom Brady, led New England to Super Bowl XLVI in 2012. But Aaron’s NFL career ended as quickly as it began. On June 26, 2013, he was arrested at his North Attleboro home, charged with the murder of Odin Lloyd, and released by the Patriots. Convicted of first-degree murder, Aaron was sentenced to life in prison without parole. On May 15, 2014, while on trial for Lloyd's murder, Aaron was indicted for two more murders. Five days after being acquitted for those double murders, he committed suicide in his jail cell. Aaron Hernandez was twenty-seven years old. In this clear-eyed, emotionally devastating biography—a family memoir combining football and true crime—Jonathan (formerly known by his nickname DJ) Hernandez speaks out fully for the first time about the brother he knew. Jonathan draws on his own recollections as well as thousands of pages of prison letters and other sources to give us a full portrait of a star athlete and troubled young man who would become a murderer, and the darkness that consumed him. Jonathan does not portray Aaron as a victim; he does not lay the blame for his crimes on his illness. He speaks openly about Aaron’s talent, his sexuality, his crimes and incarceration, and the CTE that ravaged him—scientists found that upon his death, Aaron had the brain of a sixty-seven-year old suffering from the same condition. Filled with headline-making revelations, The Truth About Aaron is a shocking and moving account of promise, tragedy, and loss—of one man’s descent into rage and violence, as told by the person who knew him more closely than anyone else.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and a finalist for the National Book Award“Brilliantly done . . . grand, intimate, and joyous.” —New York Times Book ReviewFrom the PEN/Hemingway Award-winning author of the critically acclaimed short story collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, comes Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk ("The Catch-22 of the Iraq War" —Karl Marlantes). Three minutes and forty-three seconds of intensive warfare with Iraqi insurgents—caught on tape by an embedded Fox News crew—has transformed the eight surviving men of Bravo Squad into America’s most sought-after heroes. Now they’re on a media-intensive nationwide tour to reinvigorate public support for the war. On this rainy Thanksgiving Day, the Bravos are in Texas Stadium, slated to be part of the halftime show.Among the Bravos is nineteen-year-old Specialist Billy Lynn. Surrounded by patriots sporting flag pins on their lapels and support our troops bumper stickers, he is thrust into the company of the team’s owner and his coterie of wealthy colleagues; a born-again cheerleader; a veteran Hollywood producer; and supersized players eager for a vicarious taste of war. Over the course of this day, Billy will drink and brawl, yearn for home and mourn those missing, face a heart-wrenching decision and discover pure love and a bitter wisdom far beyond his years.Poignant, riotously funny, and exquisitely heartbreaking, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk is a searing and powerful novel that has cemented Ben Fountain’s reputation as one of the finest writers of his generation.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

If I Did It

The original manuscript from OJ Simpson, how he would have murdered his wife and her friend hypothetically, with comments from the Goldman family, Pablo F. Fenjves, and Dominick Dunne.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Friday Night Lights

Return once again to the timeless account of the Permian Panthers of Odessa--the winningest high-school football team in Texas history.

Odessa is not known to be a town big on dreams, but the Panthers help keep the hopes and dreams of this small, dusty town going.

Socially and racially divided, its fragile economy follows the treacherous boom-bust path of the oil business.

In bad times, the unemployment rate barrels out of control; in good times, its murder rate skyrockets. But every Friday night from September to December, when the Permian High School Panthers play football, this West Texas town becomes a place where dreams can come true.

With frankness and compassion, H. G. Bissinger chronicles 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.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Truth Doesn't Have a Side

One day in 2002 the fifty-year old body of former Pittsburgh Steeler and hall of famer Mike Webster was laid on a cold table in front of pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu. Webster&’s body looked to Omalu like the body of a much older man, and the circumstances of his behavior prior to his death were clouded in mystery. But when Omalu cut into Webster&’s brain, it appeared to be normal. Something didn&’t add up.It was at this moment, Omalu studying slides of Webster&’s brain tissue under a microscope, that the world of contact sports would never be the same: the discovery of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. CTE can result in an array of devastating consequences including deterioration in attention, memory loss, social instability, depression, and even suicide. And Omalu&’s discovery of CTE in the brain of an American football player has become the catalyst of a blazing controversy across all contact sports.At the center of that controversy stands the unlikely Dr. Bennet Omalu, a Nigerian-born American citizen, a mild-mannered, gentle man of faith. It is fascinating that it would take someone on the outside of American culture to make this amazing discovery, and refuse to let it be kept hidden. Dr. Omalu began his life in strife, growing up in war-torn Nigeria. But his medical studies in forensic pathology proved to be a lifeline. It fed his natural curiosity and awakened within a deeper desire to always search for the truth. Who would have thought that such an unexpected character would play such a role in bringing to life this world-changing data?In Truth Doesn&’t Have a Side, discover the truth about CTE: Its causes and symptoms, how we might keep our children safe and guide professional athletes when CTE sets in. The problem of CTE is coming to light with each new story about an athlete&’s concussion problem, and we are likely facing dramatic changes to professional sports. You&’ll be inspired by Dr. Bennet Omalu a man driven by his love and concern for the welfare of all people, and his professional vow to speak the truth.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

The Heritage

Following in the footsteps of Robeson, Ali, Robinson and others, today's Black athletes re-engage with social issues and the meaning of American patriotism

It used to be that politics and sports were as separate from one another as church and state. The ballfield was an escape from the world's worst problems, top athletes were treated like heroes, and cheering for the home team was as easy and innocent as hot dogs and beer. “No news on the sports page” was a governing principle in newsrooms.

That was then.

Today, sports arenas have been transformed into staging grounds for American patriotism and the hero worship of law enforcement. Teams wear camouflage jerseys to honor those who serve; police officers throw out first pitches; soldiers surprise their families with homecomings at halftime.

Sports and politics are decidedly entwined.But as journalist Howard Bryant reveals, this has always been more complicated for black athletes, who from the start, were committing a political act simply by being on the field. In fact, among all black employees in twentieth-century America, perhaps no other group had more outsized influence and power than ballplayers. The immense social responsibilities that came with the role is part of the black athletic heritage.

It is a heritage built by the influence of the superstardom and radical politics of Paul Robeson, Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, Tommie Smith, and John Carlos through the 1960s; undermined by apolitical, corporate-friendly “transcenders of race,” O. J. Simpson, Michael Jordan, and Tiger Woods in the following decades; and reclaimed today by the likes of LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick, and Carmelo Anthony.The Heritage is the story of the rise, fall, and fervent return of the athlete-activist.

Through deep research and interviews with some of sports' best-known stars—including Kaepernick, David Ortiz, Charles Barkley, and Chris Webber—as well as members of law enforcement and the military, Bryant details the collision of post-9/11 sports in America and the politically engaged post-Ferguson black athlete.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Concussion

Soon to be a major motion picture starring Will Smith, Concussion is the riveting, unlikely story of Dr. Bennet Omalu, the pathologist who made one of the most significant medical discoveries of the twenty-first century, a discovery that challenges the existence of America's favorite sport and puts Omalu in the crosshairs of football's most powerful corporation: the NFL.

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.

A New York Times Bestseller

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Undefeated

Each year, every football team sets out to play a perfect season. Only one has ever succeeded talk about beating the odds. The Miami Dolphins of the late 1960s were a laughingstock, an expansion team, and a franchise where careers went to die.

Then came Coach Don Shula. In just a few short years--through hard work, long practices, and his no-nonsense attitude toward the game--Shula transformed the team into a championship franchise. The Dolphins were by and large unseasoned players or rejects from other teams. Even so, they made it to Super Bowl VI. They suffered a humiliating loss to the Dallas Cowboys, becoming the first team in Super Bowl history not to score a single touchdown.

But Shula closed the 1971 season by telling his players to remember this loss and make sure nothing like it ever happened again. And they listened. The Miami team came back for the 1972 season determined to be winners this time, not losers.

Through his tough-as-nails coaching, grueling preseason training, and inspiring message of redemption, Shula took the Dolphins, one game at a time, to their legendary Super Bowl victory. Led by such greats as Larry Csonka, Bob Griese, Nick Buoniconti, Larry Little, Mercury Morris, and Jake Scott--as well as players discarded from other franchises who were transformed into key contributors once they were indoctrinated into Shula's system--the team was undefeated 17-0 in the regular season and went on to win Super Bowl VII, in one of the greatest stories of toughness, perseverance, and skill the National Football League has ever seen.

Along the way, the Dolphins became the team of the 1970s, with Miami as a fascinating backdrop. The city emerged as an anti-Fidel Castro hub and morphed into the city made notorious on the television show Miami Vice. The cocaine began to flow as the Dolphins rose to prominence, and the team struggled with its own drug issues. Yet the Dolphins established themselves as one of the city's most trusted entities.

While the city faced racially charged riots, Shula purposely built an integrated locker room in an NFL--and a city--that were still extremely hostile to blacks.

Based on years of research and interviews, Undefeated, by award-winning journalist and author Mike Freeman, examines what is perhaps the single greatest accomplishment in team sports history: the unforgettable NFL season in which the Dolphins didn't lose a single game. There has never been a football team like those Miami Dolphins, and there may never be again.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Game Over

&“Enlightening&” essays on athletes, activism, and the important role sports plays in our society (Publishers Weekly).   Sportscaster Howard Cosell dubbed it &“rule number one of the jockocracy&”: sports and politics just don&’t mix. But in truth, some of our most important debates about class, race, religion, sex, and the raw quest for political power are played out both on and off the field. From the NFL lockout and the role of soccer in the Arab Spring to the Penn State sexual abuse scandals and Tim Tebow&’s on-field genuflections, this timely and hard-hitting new book from the &“conscience of American sports writing&” offers new insights and analysis of headline-grabbing sports controversies (The Washington Post).   It explores the shady side of the NCAA; the explosive 2011 MLB All-Star Game; and why the Dodgers crashed and burned. It covers the fascinating struggles of gay and lesbian athletes to gain acceptance, female athletes to be more than sex symbols, and athletes everywhere to assert their collective bargaining rights as union members. Dave Zirin also illustrates the ways that athletes are once again using their exalted platforms to speak out and reclaim sports from the corporate interests that have taken it hostage. In Game Over, he cheers the victories—but also reflects on how far we have yet to go.   &“A book that no thinking sports fan can afford to miss.&” —Jonathan Mahler, author of Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Big Game

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.

A New York Times Bestseller

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Never Shut Up

Ex-NFL player, gentleman scholar, and Fox Sports personality Marcellus Wiley sucks you into a world of inner-city violence, Ivy League intrigue, and pro-football escapades that's one part touching, one part hilarious, and all parts impossible to put down.

Marcellus Wiley has never had a problem expressing his opinion, whether it was growing up in Compton with a football tucked under his arm, or going to college at Columbia University, where he learned to survive Advanced Calculus and self-important pseudo-intellectuals. Or making it to the NFL against all odds, where he put together a ten-year career of massive paydays, massive painkillers, and massive sacks of everyone from Steve Young to Peyton Manning.

Now, in Never Shut Up, Fox Sports' hottest rising persona doesn't hold back as he goes off on everything that's controversial with the game today, from concussions to political protests to inherent violence that's worse than the hood he grew up in. Not because he hates football, but because he wants to save it.

Marcellus has never held back, even when a lot of people wanted him to. Now, he's letting it all hang out--right there on each page. Way more than just another book about the latest NFL scandals, this warm, moving, and genuinely funny story of awkward transitions, family loyalty, fame, fortune, and failure will make you fall in love with Marcellus--and football--all over again.

In Never Shut Up, Marcellus will take you on a truly unique journey from Crenshaw to Broadway to the Buffalo Bills and back again, sometimes making you laugh, sometimes making you cry, but always leaving you entertained.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

I Feel Like Going On

Ray Lewis, legendary Baltimore Ravens linebacker and one of the greatest defensive players of his generation, holds nothing back on the state of football as well as 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.

A lot of folks, they know my game, but they don't know my deal. This book right here, it tells the story of my seventeen-year NFL career. It tells of my two Super Bowls, the mark I was blessed to be able to make on the game, on the city of Baltimore. But it also tells the story of how I grew up--abandoned by my no-account father, raised with my siblings by our God-fearing, hardworking single mother.

It tells how I sometimes struggled off the field. It tells of the anguish and controversy that found me away from the game. Mostly, it tells how heartbreak can sometimes lift you to greatness and glory--if you find a way to put your focus in faith, and faith in your focus.

When I left the game, confetti raining down on me and my teammates after winning the Super Bowl, I made a promise to myself to show how the game is really played at the highest level.

That's what you'll find in these pages--a raw, honest look at the business of football and a look behind the scenes at some of the most torturous aspects of the game. The grind of the NFL--that's what shines through. My deal? That grind is a given.

Every player who wears an NFL uniform has to slog through the same battles just to get to the league. But it's how you prepare for those battles that defines you--and here I hope to show how an unwavering trust in God and an unbreakable sense of purpose can lift you from tragedy to triumph. From strength to strength, man--that's the deal.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

End Zone

'Nobody, it seems, could write better than this. No one could have a clearer vision of the micro-circuitry of post-modern life' Evening Standard Ostensibly, DeLillo's blackly comic second novel is about Gary Harkness, a football player and student at Logos College, west Texas.

During a season of unprecedented success, Gary becomes increasingly fixated on the threat of nuclear war. Both frightened and fascinated by the prospect, he listens to his team-mates discussing match tactics in much the same terms as generals might contemplate global conflict.

But as the terminologies of football and nuclear war - the language of end zones - become interchanged, the polysemous nature of words emerges, and DeLillo forces us to see beyond the sterile reality of substitution. This clever and playful novel is a timeless and topical study of human beings' obsession with conflict and confrontation.

'Powerfully funny, oblique, testy, and playful, tearing along in dazzling cinematic spurts . . . A masterful novel' Washington Post

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Collision Low Crossers

An unrivaled portrait of day-to-day life in the NFL: "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. The term also evokes the most fundamental elements of the game--speed, aggression, the interplay between space and time, and meticulously planned events that likely will not come to fruition.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Billion-Dollar Ball

* 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.From the Hardcover edition.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Why Football Matters

Acclaimed essayist Mark Edmundson reflects on his own rite of passage as a high school football player to get to larger truths about the ways America's Game shapes its men

Football teaches young men self-discipline and teamwork. But football celebrates violence. Football is a showcase for athletic beauty and physical excellence. But football damages young bodies and minds, sometimes permanently. Football inspires confidence and direction. But football instills cockiness, a false sense of superiority. The athlete is a noble figure with a proud lineage. The jock is America at its worst.

When Mark Edmundson's son began to play organized football, and proved to be very good at it, Edmundson had to come to terms with just what he thought about the game. Doing so took him back to his own childhood, when as a shy, soft boy growing up in a blue-collar Boston suburb in the sixties, he went out for the high school football team. Why Football Matters is the story of what happened to Edmundson when he tried to make himself into a football player.What does it mean to be a football player?

At first Edmundson was hapless on the field. He was an inept player and a bad teammate. But over time, he got over his fears and he got tougher. He learned to be a better player and came to feel a part of the team, during games but also on all sorts of escapades, not all of them savory. By playing football, Edmundson became what he and his father hoped he'd be, a tougher, stronger young man, better prepared for life.But is football-instilled toughness always a good thing? Do the character, courage, and loyalty football instills have a dark side? Football, Edmundson found, can be full of bounties. But it can also lead you into brutality and thoughtlessness. So how do you get what's best from the game and leave the worst behind?

Why Football Matters is moving, funny, vivid, and filled with the authentic anxiety and exhilaration of youth. Edmundson doesn't regret playing football for a minute, and cherishes the experience. His triumph is to be able to see it in full, as something to celebrate, but also something to handle with care. For anyone who has ever played on a football team, is the parent of a player, or simply is reflective about its outsized influence on America, Why Football Matters is both a mirror and a lamp.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Why Fantasy Football Matters (and Our Lives Do Not)

Talking Trash, Trading Studs, and Drafting Sleepers -- an Insider's Guide to the World's Greatest Obsession.

U.S. businesses lose $200 million in productivity each football season because employees are managing their fantasy squads instead of working.

In Why Fantasy Football Matters (And Our Lives Do Not), two grizzled veterans revel in the addiction that is fantasy football. From pre-draft hijinks to post-draft trash talk, from tumultuous trades to the perils of free agency, it celebrates the eccentric personalities, absurd rituals, and hilarious superstitions of one of the most fanatical fantasy leagues on earth.

With humor, insight, and a dash of advice, Why Fantasy Football Matters celebrates the thirty-two million Americans who prefer managing their fantasy squads to relaxing with loved ones. And it gives girlfriends, coworkers, and sports purists all the proof they need to accept that this is an obsession that really matters.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Junior Seau

This intimate biography of the NFL icon by a veteran sports reporter sheds light on his singular life and the controversy surrounding his tragic death. Tiaina Baul &“Junior&” Seau is widely considered to be among the best linebackers in NFL history, a ten-time All-Pro, a twelve-time Pro Bowl selection, and a first-ballot entrant into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. But in 2012, just two years after retiring from football, Junior Seau committed suicide. Studies of his brain by the National Institutes of Health concluded that Seau suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a brain disease often caused by repeated hits to the head. Seau&’s suicide spawned numerous investigations into the brains of deceased NFL players, and many were found to have CTE. Drawing on exclusive access to Seau&’s family as well as Seau&’s never-before-seen diaries and letters, Jim Trotter paints a moving and revealing portrait of a larger-than-life sports star whose achievements on the field were rivaled by his personal demons.&“Few people knew Junior Seau like Jim Trotter . . . he took a sports book and artistically crafted it into a lyrical narrative about dreams, love, and, ultimately, heart-wrenching loss.&”—Lars Anderson, author of The All Americans

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Brady vs Manning

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.From the Hardcover edition.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Saban

An instant New York Times bestseller—the “insidery, detailed, and absorbing” (Sports Illustrated) biography of Nick Saban, the polarizing University of Alabama football coach who not only transformed the college game, but might also be the best ever at winning.As the head coach of the University of Alabama’s football team, Nick Saban is perhaps the most influential—and polarizing—man in the sport. His program-building vision has delivered packed stadiums, rabid fans, legions of detractors, countless NFL draft picks, and a total of four national championships, including three in the last five years. He is the only coach in the college football’s modern era (since 1936) to win national championships at two different schools. Monte Burke’s Saban—the first major biography of the man who has come to epitomize the game—presents this towering figure with a never-before-seen human depth.Though a great deal is known about Nick Saban the coach, not much is known about Nick Saban the man. Little is written about his early climb through the coaching ranks as an assistant in college and in the NFL, or his head-coaching stints at Michigan State and Louisiana State and his struggles as a pro coach with the Miami Dolphins. Through unprecedented interviews with more than 250 friends, coworkers, rivals, former players, and others, Burke reveals the defining moments of the coach’s life, including the beginning of his recruiting career at age ten; his dramatic departures from three different high-profile football teams; and the building of championship programs at Louisiana State and Alabama.In Saban, “Burke has written a winning, definitive portrait of a fascinating character…. A no-holds-barred glimpse into the quest for perfection” (Publishers Weekly).

Date Added: 12/26/2018

League of Denial

"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: A chronic brain disease that was driving an alarming number of players -- including some of the all-time greats -- to madness.

League of Denial reveals how the NFL, over a period of nearly two decades, sought to cover up and deny mounting evidence of the connection between football and brain damage.

Comprehensively, and for the first time, award-winning ESPN investigative reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru tell the story of a public health crisis that emerged from the playing fields of our 21st century pastime. Everyone knew 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; that the very essence of the game could be exposing these players to brain damage.

In a fast-paced narrative that moves between the NFL trenches, America's research labs and the boardrooms where the NFL went to war against science, League of Denial examines 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.

It chronicles 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 Chargers great Junior Seau, whose diseased brain became the target of an unseemly scientific battle between researchers and the NFL.

Based on exclusive interviews, previously undisclosed documents and private emails, this is the story of what the NFL knew and when it knew it - questions at the heart of crisis that threatens football, from the highest levels all the way down to Pop Warner.

Date Added: 12/26/2018

Tropic Of Football

Football is at a crossroads, its future imperiled by the very physicality that drives its popularity. Its grass roots--high school and youth travel program--are withering. But players from the small South Pacific American territory of Samoa are bucking that trend, quietly becoming the most disproportionately overrepresented culture in the sport. Jesse Sapolu, Junior Seau, Troy Polamalu, and Marcus Mariota are among the star players to emerge from the Samoan islands, and more of their brethren suit up every season. The very thing that makes them so good at football--their extraordinary internalization of discipline and warrior self-image--makes them especially vulnerable to its pitfalls, including concussions and brain injuries.

Award-winning sports historian Rob Ruck travels to the South Seas to unravel American Samoa's complex ties with the United States. He finds an island blighted by obesity, where boys train on fields blistered with volcanic pebbles wearing helmets that should have been discarded long ago, incurring far more neurological damage than their stateside counterparts and haunted by Junior Seau, who committed suicide after a vaunted twenty-year NFL career, unable to live with the demons that resulted from chronic traumatic encephalopathy. Tropic of Football is a gripping, bittersweet history of what may be football's last frontier.

Date Added: 09/19/2019