The Greatest Texas Sports Stories You've Never Heard
The Greatest Texas Sports Stories You've Never Heard

Author: Al Pickett

Publisher: TX A&m-McWhiney Foundation

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The longest field goal in the history of football was kicked in Texas. But did you know it was love that first led a Swedish soccer player to Texas, where he still lives more than thirty years after his record-setting 69-yard field goal? That story is just one of dozens of unusual and behind-the- scenes stories veteran sports writer and broadcaster Al Pickett has compiled in more than twenty years of covering sports in Texas. Did you know that a tragedy on that same day that Ove Johansson kicked his record field goal changed University of Houston coach Art Briles' life forever? Did you know the greatest high school football coach in Texas history never played high school football himself? Or a case of déjà vu helped a Texan win the Masters golf championship? After each chapter of The Greatest Texas Sports Stories You've Never Heard, sports fans in the Lone Star State are certain to say, "I didn't know that." AL PICKETT writes for Dave Campbell's Texas Football, Red Raider Sports, and Total Texas Baseball magazines, and he hosts a daily radio show in Abilene. He is also the author of Team of the Century: The Greatest High School Football Team in Texas (State House Press, 2004) and Wishbone Wisdom, Emory Bellard: Texas Football Visionary as Told to Al Pickett (State House Press, 2010).

The Sports Revolution
The Sports Revolution

Author: Frank Andre Guridy

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2021-03-23

Total Pages: 431

ISBN-13: 1477321837

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In the 1960s and 1970s, America experienced a sports revolution. New professional sports franchises and leagues were established, new stadiums were built, football and basketball grew in popularity, and the proliferation of television enabled people across the country to support their favorite teams and athletes from the comfort of their homes. At the same time, the civil rights and feminist movements were reshaping the nation, broadening the boundaries of social and political participation. The Sports Revolution tells how these forces came together in the Lone Star State. Tracing events from the end of Jim Crow to the 1980s, Frank Guridy chronicles the unlikely alliances that integrated professional and collegiate sports and launched women’s tennis. He explores the new forms of inclusion and exclusion that emerged during the era, including the role the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders played in defining womanhood in the age of second-wave feminism. Guridy explains how the sexual revolution, desegregation, and changing demographics played out both on and off the field as he recounts how the Washington Senators became the Texas Rangers and how Mexican American fans and their support for the Spurs fostered a revival of professional basketball in San Antonio. Guridy argues that the catalysts for these changes were undone by the same forces of commercialization that set them in motion and reveals that, for better and for worse, Texas was at the center of America’s expanding political, economic, and emotional investments in sport.

Mighty, Mighty Matadors
Mighty, Mighty Matadors

Author: Al Pickett

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2017-07-05

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 1623495512

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Strongly inviting comparisons with the movie Remember the Titans, this book by veteran sports journalist and author Al Pickett is an inspiring, insider account of the Lubbock Estacado Matadors, who came together for love of a sport to become Texas State AAA High School football champions in their first year of eligibility. In the late 1960s, the Lubbock Independent School District was pressured by the courts to address its still-segregated system, and its response was the new, integrated Estacado High School. Estacado’s first head football coach, Jimmie Keeling, formed and fielded a team of young men who had never played together before and who came from widely differing parts of the social spectrum. Remarkably, he forged a unit that was not only cohesive but highly competitive, rolling undefeated toward a historic championship finish. Mighty, Mighty Matadors features action-packed accounts of Estacado’s championship season, but even more, it offers heartwarming glimpses of the lifelong friendships formed by players who joined hands across racial and social divides to accomplish a goal. In the process, they helped bring pride and unity to their hometown.

The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen
The 100 Best Movies You've Never Seen

Author: Richard Crouse

Publisher: ECW Press

Published: 2003-08-26

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 1554905400

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Offbeat movie buffs, discerning video renters, and critical viewers will benefit from this roll call of the best overlooked films of the last 70 years. Richard Crouse, film critic and host of televisions award-winning Reel to Real, details his favorite films, from the sublime Monsoon Wedding to the ridiculous Eegah! The Name Written in Blood. Each movie is featured with a detailed description of plot, notable trivia tidbits, critical reviews, and interviews with actors and filmmakers. Featured interviews include Bill Wyman on a little-known Rolling Stones documentary, schlockmeister Lloyd Kaufman on the history of the Toxic Avenger, reclusive writer and director Hampton Fancher on his film The Minus Man, and B-movie hero Bruce Campbell on playing Elvis Presley in Bubba Ho-Tep. Sidebars feature quirky details, including legal disclaimers and memorable quotes.

Watch My Smoke
Watch My Smoke

Author: Eric Dickerson

Publisher: Haymarket Books

Published: 2022-01-18

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1642596663

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

His style was iconic, and vintage ‘80s: aviator goggles, Jheri curls, neck roll, boxy pads. Eric Dickerson is the greatest player in Los Angeles Rams history and the NFL’s single season record holder for most rushing yards. In 2019, Dickerson was named to the National Football League’s 100th Anniversary All-Time Team. With an elegant upright running style that produced some of football’s most-watched highlights, it was said he was so smooth you couldn’t hear his pads clack as he glided past you. But during his Hall of Fame career, his greatness was often overshadowed by his contentious disputes with Rams management about his contract. In the pre-free agency era, tensions over his exploitative contract often overshadowed his accomplishments. What’s his problem? went the familiar refrain from the media. Can’t he just shut up and run? It’s time to reexamine how Eric Dickerson was portrayed. For the first time, he’s telling his story. And he’s not holding anything back.

Coach: The Greatest Teachers in Sports and Their Lessons for Us All
Coach: The Greatest Teachers in Sports and Their Lessons for Us All

Author: Justin Spizman

Publisher: WW Norton

Published: 2022-02-08

Total Pages: 386

ISBN-13: 0789260948

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Every great sports coach is a life coach. This book identifies 168 outstanding coaches who have much to teach us about optimizing our performance, our character, and our lives. Coaches build winning teams and enable each athlete they mentor, guide, cajole, and nurture to achieve top performance. More than this, every great sports coach is first and last a life coach. Sportswriter Justin Spizman identifies and profiles 168 of the greatest coaches and managers of all time. They have much to teach us about optimizing our performance, our character, and our lives. Coach: The Greatest Teachers in Sports and Their Lessons for Us All profiles coaches in every significant sport, from football, basketball, baseball, and hockey to gymnastics, skating, rowing, rugby, soccer, and more. From field to court, diamond, rink, and pitch, the big leagues to the Olympics, college, and high school, Coach delivers the most teachable moments and methods—for play, for competition, and for life. Rich in quotations, each profile ends with lessons for top performance on and off the field, in and beyond the arena. Justin Spizman tracks all the relevant stats—for every sport keeps score—but he seeks first and last to disclose the mind, the heart, and the force of character that drive each of the indispensable men and women behind the world’s most envied and admired athletes. His profiles range from the likes of Cardinals manager Tony La Russa (already an MLB legend), to Aimee Boorman and Cecile Canqueteau-Landi (who both coached gymnastics phenom Simone Biles), Bill Belichick (the take-no-prisoners field general of the New England Patriots), Pat Summitt (who racked up 1,098 wins as coach of the University of Tennessee Lady Vols basketball team from 1974 to 2012), Marián Vajda (the coach behind tennis titan Novak Djokovic), and David Leadbetter (golf guru to champions Kathy Baker, Nick Faldo, and Michelle Wie).

Team of the Century
Team of the Century

Author: Al Pickett

Publisher:

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781880510872

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Fifty years ago Abilene High School, under legendary Coach Chuck Moser, became a football dynasty in Texas. Moser moved to Abilene in 1953 at age thirty-four. What followed were seven of the most amazing years in the rich history of Texas high school football. The 1954, 1955, and 1956 teams won state championships. From 1954 to 1957 the Eagles won an incredible forty-nine consecutive games. Abilene captured six district titles in a row in a rugged West Texas league known as the Little Southwest Conference. In Moser's seven years, Abilene won seventy-eight games and lost only seven. In its 1999 wrap-up of the twentieth century in Texas, The Dallas Morning News designated the Eagles of 1954-57 as the "Team of the Century" in high school football. Veteran sports writer Al Pickett explores how Moser worked his magic to galvanize an entire community in support of his program and turn an otherwise ordinary group of high school kids into the best football team in Texas history.

Yellow Rose of Texas, The: The Song, the Legend and Emily D. West
Yellow Rose of Texas, The: The Song, the Legend and Emily D. West

Author: Lora-Marie Bernard

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2020

Total Pages: 160

ISBN-13: 1467142573

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"The legend of the Yellow Rose of Texas holds an indisputable place in Lone Star culture, tethered to a familiar song that has served as a Civil War marching tune, a pop chart staple and a halftime anthem. Almost two centuries of Texas mythmaking successfully muddled fact with fable in song. The true story of Emily D. West remains mired in dispute and unrecognizable beneath the manipulative tales that grew up around it. The complete truth may never be recovered, but author Lora-Marie Bernard seeks an honest account honoring the grit and determination that brought a free black woman from the abolitionist riots of Connecticut to the thick of a bloody Texas revolution. A Lone Star native who grew up immersed in the Yellow Rose legend, Bernard also traces other stories that legend has obscured, including the connection between Emily D. West and plans for a free black colony in Texas."--Back cover.

The Texanist
The Texanist

Author: David Courtney

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2017-04-25

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 1477312978

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A collection of Courtney's columns from the Texas Monthly, curing the curious, exorcizing bedevilment, and orienting the disoriented, advising "on such things as: Is it wrong to wear your football team's jersey to church? When out at a dancehall, do you need to stick with the one that brung ya? Is it real Tex-Mex if it's served with a side of black beans? Can one have too many Texas-themed tattoos?"--Amazon.com.

The Last Lecture
The Last Lecture

Author: Randy Pausch

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780340978504

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.