In this fun top-ten book, readers will learn all about football's biggest stars! With exciting photos, interesting stats, and more, sports fans will find plenty to cheer about.
The 1950s and 60s was a golden age for professional football. It was perhaps the toughest and roughest era for the sport, before rules were created to better protect the players, but it was also a time when legends were born. To many football fans this era remains the Glory Years of the NFL, when the stars that roamed the gridiron included the likes of Johnny Unitas, Bart Starr, Jim Brown, and Raymond Berry. In Remembering the Stars of the NFL Glory Years: An Inside Look at the Golden Age of Football, Wayne Stewart tells the story of professional football in the ‘50s and ‘60s through the words of the players themselves. Chapters cover Hall of Famers on both sides of the ball, players who made a lasting impression on the game, and the toughest players on the gridiron. Stewart intertwines profiles of these iconic players with the athletes’ own memories, observations, and anecdotes, including their impressions of teammates and opponents. Two additional chapters consist of humorous quotes and the players’ thoughts on how the game has changed since their heyday. Featuring exclusive interviews with players from the 1950s and ‘60s, Remembering the Stars of the NFL Glory Years provides an inside look at this distinct time in professional football. With a wide range of topics and insights included throughout, this book will both entertain and inform football fans and historians alike.
From the creators of The Mad Dog 100 comes a definitive ranking of each sport's greatest players, places, and moments in sports history, featuring such top ten lists as the Top 10 Coaches of All Time, the Top 10 Sports Venues, the Top 10 Sports Moments in History, and the Top 10 Players in Baseball, NFL Football, College Basketball, and more. Reprint. 20,000 first printing.
Readers will score a touchdown at their tailgate parties with Football’s Most Wanted™ II: The Top 10 Book of More Bruising Backs, Savage Sacks, and Gridiron Oddities by Walter Harvey. With fun facts and amazing anecdotes from professional and college football, it’s sure to delight fans new and old while presenting a wealth of interesting and amusing tidbits and trivia. Harvey takes over in the second half after a stellar performance by the starter, Football’s Most Wanted™, and is poised to lead your team to victory. With more than fifty additional top-ten lists on a plethora of pigskin possibilities, there’s something here for everybody. Harvey includes information on some of the greatest gridiron rivalries, amazing football streaks and records, the youngest coaches and oldest players, famous and defunct college football bowls, coaches who both excelled and failed when making the jump from college to the pros, and the most entertaining touchdown celebrations. He touches on footballers who go into commercials, introduces the famous “other halves” of football players, and even details ten of the longest scoring plays in NFL history. Football’s Most Wanted™ II: The Top 10 Book of More Bruising Backs, Savage Sacks, and Gridiron Oddities is a sure score for every fan.
In 1920, the University of Texas Longhorns ate their mascot at a postseason banquet. In 1940, Turk Edwards of the Washington Redskins suffered a career-ending knee injury during the pre-game coin toss. In 1969, Clive Rush was nearly electrocuted while being introduced as the new coach of the Boston Patriots. During the 1893 Army-Navy game, a general punched a heckling admiral and challenged him to a duel, which resulted in President Grover Cleveland suspending the game for six years. Football’s Most Wanted™ features the worst players, the most inept teams, the strangest plays, the most bizarre nicknames, the most fantastic finishes, the dirtiest players, the oddest injures, the greatest upsets, and the most boneheaded calls in both professional and college football. Many of these 700 anecdotes, arranged in 70 top-ten lists, are published here for the first time. Football’s Most Wanted™ features the worst players, the most inept teams, the strangest plays, the most bizarre nicknames, the most fantastic finishes, the dirtiest players, the oddest injures, the greatest upsets, and the most boneheaded calls in both professional and college football. Many of these 700 anecdotes, arranged in 70 top-ten lists, are published here for the first time.
"Big Games provides readers with an in-depth look at ten of college football's biggest rivalries and what puts them in such rare company"--Page 2 of cover
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.
No sport demands toughness more than professional football, and no sport celebrates it with as much joy, excitement, and pride. John Madden annually offers his picks of the top tough guys, and sick hits are shown repeatedly on jumbotrons nationwide and ESPN's Sportscenter. Anyone who's ever watched an NFL Films production can surely hear "the voice"--that distinctive narrator--lauding the warriors of the gridiron who lay it all out there. Imagine his voice as you say: "These tough men came to do battle today, and only the fiercest will win." Into this atmosphere comes Neil Reynolds, public relations manager for the NFL in Europe, and his new book Pain Gang: Pro Football's Fifty Toughest Players. From early day heroes, such as Bronko Nagurski, Clark Hinkle, and Frank "Bruiser" Kinard, to Hall of Famers like Ronnie Lott, Walter Payton, and Dick Butkus, to such modern-day iron men as Emmitt Smith, Brett Favre, and Rodney Harrison, Reynolds lauds some of the toughest, meanest, most inspirational, and hardest-working men in the roughest sport. He includes interviews with teammates, coaches, opponents, and the players themselves on what it means to be tough, how they characterize toughness, and even who was the toughest of them all. Some players fought through broken bones and tired bodies. Others laid out opponents with the hardest of hits. Still others proved themselves on the battlefields of World War II before joining this secondary field of battle. And some played hard and fast--mostly within the rules--in order to intimidate their opponents through sheer fear. Whatever their means, these guys were tough and knew it--and they made sure everyone else did as well. Meet the Pain Gang, and you'll know it too.