Gridiron PDF Download

Author: Philip Kerr
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781409018872
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Fred Bowen
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1481481142
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 112

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This accessible, informative, and beautifully illustrated book celebrates the 100th anniversary of the NFL and is the perfect keepsake for football fans of all ages. The National Football League is the most popular sports league in the United States. Its championship game, the Super Bowl, is watched by millions of people every year. But it wasn’t always like this. In the last one hundred years, football has changed from a poorly organized, often overlooked sport to America’s favorite pastime. Here are the stories of that remarkable transformation. The stories of the greatest players, the most successful coaches, the most memorable games—and the amazing plays that made us gasp as we watched them in stadiums and on televisions all over America. Discover the league’s scrappy beginnings in an automobile showroom, and early players like Red Grange, the Galloping Ghost. Relive the very first championship game, played indoors after a circus had visited, and famous games like the Ice Bowl. See the NFL at war, and meet some of the remarkable athletes who helped desegregate the league. Learn how the draft came into existence, and about the teams that strove for that almost impossible goal—a perfect season. Veteran sportswriter Fred Bowen brings his in-depth knowledge and lively prose to these fascinating stories, and award-winning artist James E. Ransome has created stunning full-page illustrations that bring the sport of football to life like never before.

Author: Jim Black
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
ISBN: 9781608441693
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 324

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At long last, the story behind one of the most memorable chapters in Texas high school football history: The 1964 Class A State Champion Archer City Wildcats. An enthralling account from the team's humble beginnings to its improbable march through the play-offs. It's all here-the blood, sweat, and tears; the hardships, sacrifices, and triumphs; and the far-reaching effects of their miracle season on the team and its town. In the tradition of Hoosiers and Remember the Titans, Jim Black's latest novel will have readers laughing, crying, and cheering the remarkable story of a Cinderella high school football team in a small Texas town in the 1960s. Based on true events, Miracle on the Gridiron is sure to appeal to anyone who roots for the underdog. Jim Black was born in Center, Texas, in 1953 and today lives in Wichita Falls, Texas, with his wife Lorrie. He is the author of two previous novels, River Season (2003) and Tracks (2007), and four stage plays. To learn more about the author, visit jimblackbooks.com.

Author: Michael Lombardi
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0525573836
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Former NFL general manager and three-time Super Bowl winner Michael Lombardi reveals what makes football organizations tick at the championship level. From personnel to practice to game-day decisions that win titles, Lombardi shares what he learned working with coaching legends Bill Walsh of the 49ers, Al Davis of the Raiders, and Bill Belichick of the Patriots, among others, during his three decades in football. Why do some NFL franchises dominate year after year while others can never crack the code of success? For 30 years Michael Lombardi had a front-row seat and full access as three titans--Bill Walsh, Al Davis, and Bill Belichick--reinvented the game, turning it into a national obsession while piling up Super Bowl trophies. Now, in Gridiron Genius, Lombardi provides the blueprint that makes a successful organization click and win--and the mistakes unsuccessful organizations make that keep them on the losing side time and again. In reality, very few coaches understand the philosophies, attention to detail, and massive commitment that defined NFL juggernauts like the 49ers and the Patriots. The best organizations are not just employing players, they are building something bigger. Gridiron Genius will explain how the best leaders evaluate, acquire, and utilize personnel in ways other professional minds, football and otherwise, won't even contemplate. How do you know when to trade a player? How do you create a positive atmosphere when everyone is out to maximize his own paycheck? And why is the tight end like the knight on a chessboard? To some, game planning consists only of designing an attack for the next opponent. But Lombardi explains how the smartest leaders script everything: from an afternoon's special-teams practice to a season's playoff run to a decade-long organizational blueprint. Readers will delight in the Lombardi tour of an NFL weekend, including what really goes on during the game on and off the field and inside the headset. First stop: Belichick's Saturday night staff meeting, where he announces how the game will go the next day. Spoiler alert: He always nails it. Football dynasties are built through massive attention to detail and unwavering commitment. From how to build a team, to how to watch a game, to understanding the essential qualities of great leaders, Gridiron Genius gives football fans the knowledge to be the smartest person in the room every Sunday.

Author: Lane Demas
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813547415
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192

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Even the most casual sports fans celebrate the achievements of professional athletes, among them Jackie Robinson, Muhammad Ali, and Joe Louis. Yet before and after these heroes staked a claim for African Americans in professional sports, dozens of college athletes asserted their own civil rights on the amateur playing field, and continue to do so today. Integrating the Gridiron, the first book devoted to exploring the racial politics of college athletics, examines the history of African Americans on predominantly white college football teams from the nineteenth century through today. Lane Demas compares the acceptance and treatment of black student athletes by presenting compelling stories of those who integrated teams nationwide, and illuminates race relations in a number of regions, including the South, Midwest, West Coast, and Northeast. Focused case studies examine the University of California, Los Angeles in the late 1930s; integrated football in the Midwest and the 1951 Johnny Bright incident; the southern response to black players and the 1955 integration of the Sugar Bowl; and black protest in college football and the 1969 University of Wyoming "Black 14." Each of these issues drew national media attention and transcended the world of sports, revealing how fans--and non-fans--used college football to shape their understanding of the larger civil rights movement.

Author: Michael Pellowski
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
ISBN: 0813542839
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Rutgers Football: A Gridiron Tradition in Scarlet is a richly illustrated history of one of the most storied programs in all of college football. From the first intercollegiate contest against Princeton in 1869, which started college football as we know it, through the years that Paul Robeson suited up for the team, the famous undefeated season of 1976, and right up to the Schiano era, former Scarlet Knight Michael Pellowski takes you on a fascinating journey that chronicles the highlights of the first 137 years of Rutgers football. He makes special mention of the Scarlet Knights who have gone on to successful careers in the NFL-Brian Leonard, Mike McMahon, L.J. Smith, Gary Brackett, Ray Lucas, Deron Cherry, among others-and includes a complete listing of letter winners.

Author: K. R. Coleman
Publisher: Darby Creek ™
ISBN: 1512482250
Category : Young Adult Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 78

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With the state tournament finals just around the corner, the crosstown rivalry between the Edison High Eddies and the Winfield Wildcats heats up. Toby and Walter, second-string Edison sophomores, are just along for the ride. But when a series of pranks led by the star seniors goes too far, will these second-string players be able to fill the shoes of the starters? Or did their teammates' bad behavior cost the Eddies the state title?

Author: Vicki Mayk
Publisher: Beacon Press
ISBN: 0807021962
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Explores the experience of one young man and the concerns about CTE he helped to illuminate, and the cultural allure of football in America that keeps boys trying to make the team despite the dangers Award-winning journalist Vicki Mayk raises a critical question for football players and their communities: does loving a sport justify risking your life? This is the insightful and deeply human story of Owen Thomas—a star football player at Penn, who took his own life when he was 21, the result of the pain and anguish caused by chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE). It was Owen’s landmark case which demonstrated that a player didn’t need years of head bashing in the NFL, or even multiple sustained brain concussions, to cause the mind-altering, life-threatening, degenerative disease known as CTE. And Owen’s case could not have come to light without Dr. Ann McKee, the neuropathologist who bucked conventional wisdom, and the football establishment, as she examined Owen’s brain and its larger significance, building an ever-stronger case that said, at the very least, football should not be played by children under the age of 14. With its focus on a single life and the community touched by it—Owen’s family, his teammates and friends, his teachers and coaches, and, later, Dr. McKee—Growing Up on the Gridiron explores the place of football in our lives. It doesn’t make a heavy-handed argument to abandon the sport. Rather, it explores why football matters so deeply to many young men, and why they continue to take risks despite the evidence of serious, long-term harm.

Author: Danny Spewak
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538157632
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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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.

Author: Brian M. Ingrassia
Publisher: University Press of Kansas
ISBN: 0700621393
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 336

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The quarterback sends his wide receiver deep. The crowd gasps as he launches the ball. And when he hits his man, the team's fans roar with approval-especially those with the deep pockets. Make no mistake; college football is big business, played with one eye on the score, the other on the bottom line. But was this always the case? Brian M. Ingrassia here offers the most incisive account to date of the origins of college football, tracing the sport's evolution from a gentlemen's pastime to a multi-million dollar enterprise that made athletics a permanent fixture on our nation's campuses and cemented college football's place in American culture. He takes readers back to the late 1800s to tell how schools embraced the sport as a way to get the public interested in higher learning-and then how football's immediate popularity overwhelmed campuses and helped create the beast we know today. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Ingrassia proves that the academy did not initially resist the inclusion of athletics; rather, progressive reformers and professors embraced football as a way to make the ivory tower less elitist. With its emphasis on disciplined teamwork and spectatorship, football was seen as a "middlebrow" way to make the university more accessible to the general public. What it really did was make athletics a permanent fixture on campus with its own set of professional experts, bureaucracies, and ostentatious cathedrals. Ingrassia examines the early football programs at universities like Michigan, Stanford, Ohio State, and others, then puts those histories in the context of Progressive Era culture, including insights from coaches like Georgia Tech's John Heisman and Notre Dame's Knute Rockne. He describes how reforms emerged out of incidents such as Teddy Roosevelt's son being injured on the field and a section of grandstands collapsing at the University of Chicago. He also touches on some of the problems facing current day college football and shows us that we haven't come far from those initial arguments more than a century ago. The Rise of Gridiron University shows us where and how it all began, highlighting college football's essential role in shaping the modern university-and by extension American intellectual culture. It should have wide appeal among students of American studies and sports history, as well as fans of college football curious to learn how their game became a cultural force in a matter of a few decades.