ESPN's Sal Paolantonio explores just how crucial football is to understanding the American psyche Using some of the most prominent voices in pro sports and cultural and media criticism, "How Football Explains America" is a fascinating, first-of-its-kind journey through the making of America's most complex, intriguing, and popular game. It tackles varying American themes--from Manifest Destiny to "fourth and one"--as it answers the age-old question Why does America love football so much? An unabashedly celebratory explanation of America's love affair with the game and the men who make it possible, this work sheds light on how the pioneers and cowboys helped create a game that resembled their march across the continent. It explores why rugby and soccer don't excite the American male like football does and how the game's rules are continually changing to enhance the dramatic action and create a better narrative. It also investigates the eternal appeal of the heroic quarterback position, the sport's rich military lineage, and how the burgeoning medium of television identified and exploited the NFL's great characters. It is a must read for anyone interested in more fully understanding not only the game but also the nation in which it thrives. Updated throughout and with a new introduction, this edition brings "How Football Explains America" to paperback for the first time.

Professional football in the last half century has been a sport marked by relentless innovation. For fans determined to keep up with the changes that have transformed the game, close examination of the coaching footage is a must. In The Games That Changed the Game, Ron Jaworski—pro football’s #1 game-tape guru—breaks down the film from seven of the most momentous contests of the last fifty years, giving readers a drive-by-drive, play-by-play guide to the evolutionary leaps that define the modern NFL. From Sid Gillman’s development of the Vertical Stretch, which launched the era of wide-open passing offenses, to Bill Belichick’s daring defensive game plan in Super Bowl XXXVI, which enabled his outgunned squad to upset the heavily favored St. Louis Rams and usher in the New England Patriots dynasty, the most cutting-edge concepts come alive again through the recollections of nearly seventy coaches and players. You’ll never watch NFL football the same way again.

It’s difficult to imagine today—when the Super Bowl has virtually become a national holiday and the National Football League is the country’s dominant sports entity—but pro football was once a ramshackle afterthought on the margins of the American sports landscape. In the span of a single generation in postwar America, the game charted an extraordinary rise in popularity, becoming a smartly managed, keenly marketed sports entertainment colossus whose action is ideally suited to television and whose sensibilities perfectly fit the modern age. America’s Game traces pro football’s grand transformation, from the World War II years, when the NFL was fighting for its very existence, to the turbulent 1980s and 1990s, when labor disputes and off-field scandals shook the game to its core, and up to the sport’s present-day preeminence. A thoroughly entertaining account of the entire universe of professional football, from locker room to boardroom, from playing field to press box, this is an essential book for any fan of America’s favorite sport.

Between 1880 and 1905, more than 325 deaths were reported in college football, and several major football schools, including Princeton, Harvard, Columbia, and Penn, threatened to drop the sport. President Theodore Roosevelt even called a White House conference to eliminate football's violence. One result was the development of the forward pass, which reduced the frequency of dangerous collisions between helmetless players. Enter Jesse Harper, head football coach at Notre Dame. Harper recognized the potential of the forward pass, and, by the summer of 1913, along with star players Knute Rockne and Gus Dorais, had perfected an efficient, overhand throwing motion. With this new offensive weapon, the Fighting Irish marched into West Point that fall to face the Eastern powerhouse Army, and routed the Black Knights 35–13. This victory not only changed the way football would be played, it also established Notre Dame as a football power. This is the story of Jesse Harper and his tremendous impact on the game we know today. Drawing from years of original research, Frank P. Maggio brings the classic victory to life and recounts Jesse Harper's role in Notre Dame's evolution into college football's most successful and storied program, and an elite university.

A fascinating history of the Super Bowl and its massive impact on the sports world and beyond. The Super Bowl has changed what was just another wintry Sunday into America’s unofficial holiday. It’s the biggest entertainment event of the year. It’s the most important advertising event of the year. It is the biggest gambling event of the year. More Americans watch this game than vote in presidential elections. How did this all happen? In The Football Game That Changed America, Dennis Deninger reveals how the Super Bowl went from almost being canceled after its first two years to becoming an ingrained part of American life. He tells the story of how this colossal event came to be—including the challenges, stumbles, and amusing surprises along the way—and details the game’s incredible impact well beyond the sports world, touching virtually every facet of life in the United States. Featuring colorful characters, bold rivals, and twists of fate, The Football Game That Changed America brings the history, growth, and future of the Super Bowl to life. It’s a captivating deep dive into a sporting event like no other.

When boys played a man's game and football was hell

“Frank Gifford brings the contest so alive that you find yourself almost wondering, 50 years later, how it will turn out in the end.” —New York Times Book Review The Glory Game recreates in breathtaking detail the 1958 National Football League Championship Game between the New York Giants and the Baltimore Colts, which many football fans feel was “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” This first-hand, field level, “behind-the-helmet” account by ex-Giant Hall of Famer and longtime “Monday Night Football” broadcaster Frank Gifford brings back to life all the sights and sounds of the momentous contest that changed football forever, and offers vivid, indelible portraits of the legendary players—including Sam Huff, Andy Robustelli, Art Donovan, Lenny Moore, and Raymond Berry. The Giants-Colts clash of ’58 was truly The Glory Game—and now readers can relive it in all its glory.

"This is the first football history to chronicle year by year how playing rules developed the game. Football - a four-dimensional game of rushing, kicking, forward passing, and backward passing - has had more playing rule changes since its inception than any other sport. The Anatomy of a Game follows football rules from the game's European roots through its beginning in the United States to its position as the number-one spectator sport in the 1990s. Highlighted are details of the crisis years that changed the character of the game, with coaches and rules committee members the featured players. David M. Nelson, who served on the NCAA Rules Committee longer than Walter Camp, provides personal insight into all Rules Committee meetings since 1958, as well as an appendix - chronological and by rule - listing every change since 1876." "Ever since the first two human beings kicked, threw, or batted an object competitively, there have been playing rules. Games are mentioned in the Bible, and the Romans brought football's forerunner to Britain, from where it was exported to the United States. It was in the United States that college students decided to make their game rugby rather than soccer. Although the students invented United States football and made the first rules, their ruling power was eventually lost to the faculty, administrators, coaches, rules committees, and the NCAA." "Beginning as a brutal sport, football survived several crises before and after the turn of the century, eventually becoming respectable. The 1931 injury crisis split the high school and college rules and the same year the professionals went their own way, with rules largely based on spectator appeal." "Today the sport is a national treasure primarily because of its playing rules, over seven hundred in total, which make college football unique among the world's team sports. Moreover, football remains an American game, never having the same impact in other countries as do baseball and basketball." "Rules make the game, but people make the rules. Football survived the major crises that threatened the game because committee members adhered to the precepts that had governed football since its inception. The game began with an attempt to have a consistent code of justice, personal accountability, and equality. In some sense the playing rules are a type of moral precept that explains in the simplest terms what can and cannot be done. The Football Code, which first prefaced the rules in 1916, makes the game - more than any other sport - a moral one because it sets standards for coaching, playing, sportsmanship, and officiating."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Walter Camp made the development of football—indeed, its very creation—his lifelong mission. From his days as a college athlete, Camp's love of the game and dedication to its future put it on the course that would allow it to seize the passions of the nation. Roger R. Tamte tells the engrossing but forgotten life story of Walter Camp, the man contemporaries called "the father of American football." He charts Camp's leadership as American players moved away from rugby and for the first time tells the story behind the remarkably inventive rule change that, in Camp's own words, was "more important than all the rest of the legislation combined." Trials also emerged, as when disputes over forward passing, the ten-yard first down, and other rules became so public that President Theodore Roosevelt took sides. The resulting political process produced losses for Camp as well as successes, but soon a consensus grew that football needed no new major changes. American football was on its way, but as time passed, Camp's name and defining influence became lost to history. Entertaining and exhaustively researched, Walter Camp and the Creation of American Football weaves the life story of an important sports pioneer with a long-overdue history of the dramatic events that produced the nation's most popular game.

Sally Jenkins, bestselling co-author of It's Not About the Bike, revives a forgotten piece of history in The Real All Americans. In doing so, she has crafted a truly inspirational story about a Native American football team that is as much about football as Lance Armstrong's book was about a bike. If you’d guess that Yale or Harvard ruled the college gridiron in 1911 and 1912, you’d be wrong. The most popular team belonged to an institution called the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Its story begins with Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt, a fierce abolitionist who believed that Native Americans deserved a place in American society. In 1879, Pratt made a treacherous journey to the Dakota Territory to recruit Carlisle’s first students. Years later, three students approached Pratt with the notion of forming a football team. Pratt liked the idea, and in less than twenty years the Carlisle football team was defeating their Ivy League opponents and in the process changing the way the game was played. Sally Jenkins gives this story of unlikely champions a breathtaking immediacy. We see the legendary Jim Thorpe kicking a winning field goal, watch an injured Dwight D. Eisenhower limping off the field, and follow the glorious rise of Coach Glenn “Pop” Warner as well as his unexpected fall from grace. The Real All Americans is about the end of a culture and the birth of a game that has thrilled Americans for generations. It is an inspiring reminder of the extraordinary things that can be achieved when we set aside our differences and embrace a common purpose.