Sports & Recreation : Football

"This book will change the way you think about professional football--in much the same way that Bill James revolutionized the analysis of Major League Baseball. The research is impeccable. The approach is irreverent. You will be 'blindsided' by what you think you know about the NFL, but don't. Warning to fantasy football lovers: You won't be able to put this book down.". —Sal Paolantonio, ESPN reporter and author of The Paolantonio Report: The Most Overrated and Underrated Players, Teams, Coaches, and Moments in NFL History. "KC Joyner's theories will completely revolutionize football, cure baldness, save the whales, and bring total peace and harmony to all nations. That's why you must read Blindsided!". —Gregg Easterbrook, ESPN's Tuesday Morning Quarterback. "Too much of football literature is just tedious hagiography, but Blindsided is a book for those of us who enjoy the complex game on the field and football conversation that goes past 'my team rules.' ". —Aaron Schatz, lead author and editor of Pro Football Prospectus. Pro football’s statistical iconoclast, K.C. Joyner, challenges conventional wisdom with fact-based and film-based responses in Blindsided: Why the Left Tackle is Overrated and Other Contrarian Football Thoughts . If you love sports statistics or find excitement in fantasy football, you will enjoy the detailed insights and carefully researched information in this book. Scrap the typical media hype and hoopla for the real, straight-from-the-fields-and-films scoop, including information on free agents, parity, NFL business practice, Hall of Fame standards, coaching practices, historical iconoclasm, and a thorough statistical review. more...

Price: $24.95

He is a giant among coaches, a Hall of Famer with a legacy that spans six full decades of coaching, and arguably the greatest Division I college football coach in history. And now Bobby Bowden finally has a biography that befits his stature: Bowden by award-winning journalist and author Mike Freeman. Based on six years of research and interviews with Bowden himself, not to mention the Bowden family, former players, and opposing coaches, Bowden is the complete stunning story of the making of a legend. Despite growing up in the segregated South and witnessing the ugly racism of the time, Bowden still developed into one of the most race-sensitive coaches in college history. When sick as a child, he listened to the radio and gained a taste for war strategy and for Alabama football games on Saturdays. He played football in high school but decided he wanted to be a coach. After years of turning around smaller football programs, and following a tumultuous but successful head coaching tenure at West Virginia University, Bowden accepted the post at Florida State University (FSU), a failing program that was regularly beaten by in-state rival University of Florida. In fact, just the year before Bowden became coach, in 1975, the president of FSU contemplated terminating the program altogether, particularly because the team had won only four games in the past three years. What Bowden accomplished at FSU is nothing short of miraculous: twenty-one bowl wins and two national championships. And he was the only coach to secure a top-five ranking in the Associated Press polls for fourteen straight seasons. A brilliant tactician, he helped usher the pro passing game into college football, after initially doubting it could work on the college level. He has been an unrivaled recruiter, not only coaching his players but also becoming a surrogate father to many of them, all while producing thirty-one consensus All-Americans over the course of his tenure. He spawned one of the greatest riva more...

Price: $19.99

The Genius is the gripping and definitive account of Bill Walsh’s career and how he built a football dynasty from the rubble of a fallen franchise. David Harris gives a stellar account of the silver-haired sophisticate from humble working-class roots who was hired as head coach and general manager of the San Francisco Forty Niners in January 1979 and became the architect of what is arguably the greatest ten-year run in NFL history. more...

Price: $17.00

Just in time for the 2007 season: One of the finest defensive players ever to wear an NFL uniform delivers the first truly authentic, hard-hitting, revelatory portrait of America’s most popular sport—including the brutality, the vicious fights, and the high price of gridiron glory. Michael Strahan is one of the NFL’s most talented players, and he is also one of the game’s most vocal personalities. So it’s no surprise that his first book would be a no-holds-barred, hard-hitting account of life in the league, venturing into territory no previous football authors had the nerve to tread. Inside the Helmet is not a self-serving memoir or a collection of triumphant feel- good anecdotes. Yes, Strahan recounts exhilarating victories in vivid detail, but not without the hair-raising details of the ruthless grit required for every win. Sure to be controversial, Strahan’s account reveals never-before-seen details about the truth of life in the NFL, including the names of the dirtiest players, what it feels and sounds like to crush another player, which potent painkillers players take in order to return to the battlefield, the wild parties such as the Vikings’ infamous Love Boat romp, the pressure to live up to a multimillion- dollar salary, the intense and sometimes volatile relationship between player and coach, and the violent blowups that occur when that pressure gets too intense. For the 21.7 million fans who attend NFL football games, Inside the Helmet is an all-access pass into the huddle, the locker room, and even the minds of some of the most legendary players on the field today. more...

Price: $15.00

When Steve ('Beaver') Menzies retires at the end of the 2008 League season, he may well need to have a National Trust preservation order placed on him.  We may never see his like again. He has never played for any other first-grade club than his beloved Manly Sea Eagles. As a clean-living, clean-playing second-rower he's a legend (his partner is currently pregnant with their first child).  He's been a stalwart of the Australian Test and NSW State of Origin teams and was in Manly's 1996 Grand Final side.  He is the second most prolific try-scorer in the game (only Ken Irvine is ahead of him).  If, as expected, he completes next season without injury, he will become the first-grade player who has made the most appearances ever (only Terry Lamb is ahead of him at the moment). The Beaver is an inspiration to everyone who loves the game they don't play in heaven.  His book, which tells of the amazing guys he  has played alongside and against over the years, will be launched in the middle of his last season at Manly. more...

Price: $23.95