A lively and profusely illustrated history of the Golden Gophers from their first informal game against Hamline University at the Minneapolis Fairgrounds in 1882 to the eve of their return to outdoor football on the U of M campus in 2009 after playing 26 years downtown in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome.

Step into the life of a man who schmoozed, mingled and befriended celebrities, corporate presidents, major league ball players, big name fighters, rogues and Mafioso. Walk with David LeVine through his multiple careers in sales and management with Xerox and American Express, his rewarding work in TV and radio broadcasting and his part-ownership in a doomed Las Vegas nightclub. Enjoy humorous anecdotes and vignettes about luminaries such as Frank Sinatra, Jamie Farr, Lee Greenwood and the late Yankee manager Billy Martin. Many only dream of having experiences like LeVine's. He never imagined becoming a blow-by-blow fight broadcaster; a TV sports anchor, or a successful corporate sales manager, yet he achieved all three. Read about his triumphs and setbacks and learn how timing, a little talent and a sense of humor can get one through almost anything.

In Walter Camp: Football and the Modern Man, Julie Des Jardins chronicles the life of the clock company executive and self-made athlete who remade football and redefined the ideal man.

When the colonies that became the USA were still dominions of the British Empire they began to imagine their sporting pastimes as finer recreations than even those enjoyed in the motherland. From the war of independence and the creation of the republic to the twenty-first century, sporting pastimes have served as essential ingredients in forging nationhood in American history. This collection gathers the work of an all-star team of historians of American sport in order to explore the origins and meanings of the idea of national pastimes—of a nation symbolized by its sports. These wide-ranging essays analyze the claims of particular sports to national pastime status, from horse racing, hunting, and prize fighting in early American history to baseball, basketball, and football more than two centuries later. These essays also investigate the legal, political, economic, and culture patterns and the gender, ethnic, racial, and class dynamics of national pastimes, connecting sport to broader historical themes. American National Pastimes chronicles how and why the USA has used sport to define and debate the contours of nation. This book was published as a special issue of the International Journal of the History of Sport.

The Business of Sports, Second Edition is a comprehensive collection of readings that focus on the multibillion-dollar sports industry and the dilemmas faced by todays sports business leaders. It contains a dynamic set of readings to provide a complete overview of major sports business issues. The Second Edition covers professional, Olympic, and collegiate sports, and highlights the major issues that impact each of these broad categories. The Second Edition continue to provide insight from a variety of stakeholders in the industry and cover the major business disciplines of management, marketing, finance, information technology, accounting, ethics and law. In addition, it features concise introductions, targeted discussion questions, and graphs and tables to convey relevant financial data and other statistics discussed. This book is designed for current and future sports business leaders as well as those interested in the inner-workings of the industry.

The remarkable story of a championship college football team and the sacrifices the young athletes made when Pearl Harbor forced their country into war. As the United States veered towards war during the fall of 1941, the University of Minnesota football team completed an undefeated national championship season—just fifteen days before the strike on Pearl Harbor. After the attack, players left behind college football stardom to command PT boats in the South Pacific, sweep mines on the beaches of Normandy, and join the invasion of Iwo Jima along with so many others from the Greatest Generation. In From the Gridiron to the Battlefield, Danny Spewak shares the struggles and triumphs of the Golden Gophers’ 1941 season, recalling how players battled on the field even with the threat of war hanging over their heads. When the United States finally entered the war, every member of the team participated in the war effort in one way or another. As Spewak recounts, some players remained stateside in the U.S. Navy, others sailed to the Pacific Theater and faced direct combat at Iwo Jima, while another earned a Purple Heart for his heroism at Normandy. Now more than 80 years after the attack on Pearl Harbor, From the Gridiron to the Battlefield reveals the sacrifices and courage of the Greatest Generation through the eyes of the 1941 Golden Gophers.