Sport
Football
Departments
Sports Posters
Advertisment;
Best Sellers
This site is a financial supporter of Wikimedia
|
God
and Football: Faith and Fanaticism in the SEC
by Chad Gibbs
Paperback from Zondervan
ISBN: 0310329221
In 2008 over six million people attended an SEC football game. They
spent thousands on season tickets, donated millions to athletic departments,
and for three months a year ordered their entire lives around the schedule
of their favorite team. As a Christian, Gibbs knows he cannot serve two
masters, but at times his faith is overwhelmed by his fanaticism. He is
not alone. Gibbs and his six million friends do not live in a spiritually
void land where such borderline idol worship would normally be accepted.
They live in the American South, where according to the 2008 American Religious
Identification Survey, 84 percent identify themselves as Christians. This
apparent contradiction that Gibbs sees in his own life, and in millions
of others', has led him to journey to each of the twelve schools to spend
time with rabid Christian fans of various ages and denominations. Through
his journey, he learns how others are able to balance their passion for
their team with their devotion to God. |
| |
Pigskin
Warriors: 140 Years of College Football's Greatest Traditions, Games, and
Stars
by Steven Travers
Hardcover from Taylor Trade Publishing
ISBN: 1589793331
This is the story of a sport's role in society, from the "leather helmet
era," through the dawn of television and its tremendous impact on the college
game, and up to the present era of collegiate football as "big business"--all
outlined against a "blue, gray October sky" of American history. In this
comprehensive history, Steven Travers breaks down the story of college
football into two eras--the period prior to World War I, when the nascent
sport was so dangerous that President Theodore Roosevelt proposed legislation
to make the sport safer, and the "modern" era, when the popularity of football
led to the development of professional leagues largely fed by college players.
He also explores our obsession with identifying winners, from controversies
over poll rankings to tracking the performance of players on the short
list for the Heisman or Outland Trophies. In addition to profiling the
great players and their greatest games, Travers also considers how the
sport has infiltrated the popular culture, listing, for example, the top
eight college football movies of all time, and the origin of the term "Ivy
League." Travers also compiles an impressive list of All-Americans, bowl
performances, all-time winning records, winning streaks, great runs, decades
and dynasties, pro football representation, and a host of other detailed
criteria. It's all here: the statistics, the stories, and the lore of a
game that has and will continue to dominate fall Saturdays for another
hundred years to come. |
| |
|
ESPN
College Football Encyclopedia: The Complete History of the Game
Hardcover from ESPN
Media Published: 2005-
ISBN: 1401337031
The most comprehensive reference book ever assembled on the history
of college football
From South Bend, Indiana, to Lincoln, Nebraska, Palo Alto, California,
to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Tallahassee, Florida,
college football attracts the most dedicated fans in all of sports. This
book is their Bible -- a rich and exhaustive reference guide to the game's
history, tradition, and lore. Based on three years of research by the nation's
foremost college football experts, the book features:
-Capsule histories for each of the Division 1-A programs, the Ivy League
schools, and the historically black colleges -Year-by-year schedules and
scores for each school -Statistical leaders from each school -Fight-song
lyrics -Box scores for every bowl game ever played -Weekly AP and UPI polls
dating back to 1936 -A four-color insert illustrating the evolution of
each school's helmet design -Essays by the game's top wordsmiths, including
Dan Jenkins, Beano Cook, Chris Fowler, and more. -And a lively round-table
discussion on the state of the game with ESPN's popular GameDay team (Fowler,
Lee Corso, and Kirk Herbstreit).
Packed with tables and charts and designed in an easy-to-read style,
the ESPN College Football Encyclopedia is sure to dazzle even the
most knowledgeable fan. |
| |
Scoreboard,
Baby: A Story of College Football, Crime, and Complicity
by Ken Armstrong, Nick Perry
Paperback from Bison Books
ISBN: 0803228104
Winner of the 2011 Edgar Award, Best Crime Fact category
The adjectives associated with the University of Washington's 2000
football season mystical, magical, miraculous changed when Ken Armstrong
and Nick Perry's four-part exposÃÆ’© of the 2000 Huskies
hit the newspaper stands: "explosive . . . chilling" (Sports Illustrated),
"blistering" (Baltimore Sun), "shocking . . . appalling" (Tacoma News Tribune),
"astounding" (ESPN), "jaw-dropping" (Orlando Sentinel).
Now, in Scoreboard, Baby, Armstrong and Perry go behind the scenes
of the Huskies Cinderella story to reveal a timeless morality tale about
the price of obsession, the creep of fanaticism, and the ways in which
a community can lose even when its team wins. The authors unearth the true
story from firsthand interviews and thousands of pages of documents: the
forensic report on a bloody fingerprint; the notes of a detective investigating
allegations of rape; confidential memoranda of prosecutors; and the criminal
records of the dozen-plus players arrested that year with scant mention
in the newspapers and minimal consequences in the courts. The statement
of a judge, sentencing one player to thirty days in jail, says it all:
"to be served after football season." |
| |
College
Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy
by John Sayle Watterson
Paperback from The Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 080187114X
"In March [1892] Stanford and California had played the first college
football game on the Pacific Coast in San Francisco... The pregame activities
included a noisy parade down streets bedecked with school colors. Tickets
sold so fast that the Stanford student manager, future president Herbert
Hoover, and his California counterpart, could not keep count of the gold
and silver coins. When they finally totaled up the proceeds, they found
that the revenues amounted to $30,000--a fair haul for a game that had
to be temporarily postponed because no one had thought to bring a ball!"--from
College Football: History, Spectacle, Controversy, Chapter Three
In this comprehensive history of America's popular pastime, John Sayle
Watterson shows how college football in more than one hundred years has
evolved from a simple game played by college students into a lucrative,
semiprofessional enterprise. With a historian's grasp of the context and
a novelist's eye for the telling detail, Watterson presents a compelling
portrait rich in anecdotes, colorful personalities, and troubling patterns.
He tells how the infamous Yale-Princeton "fiasco" of 1881, in which
Yale forced a 0-0 tie in a championship game by retaining possession of
the ball for the entire game, eventually led to the first-down rule that
would begin to transform Americanized rugby into American football. He
describes the kicks and punches, gouged eyes, broken collarbones, and flagrant
rule violations that nearly led to the sport's demise (including such excesses
as a Yale player who wore a uniform soaked in blood from a slaughterhouse).
And he explains the reforms of 1910, which gave official approval to a
radical new tactic traditionalists were sure would doom the game as they
knew it--the forward pass.
As college football grew in the booming economy of the 1920s, Watterson
explains, the flow of cash added fuel to an already explosive mix. Coaches
like Knute Rockne became celebrities in their own right, with highly paid
speaking engagements and product endorsements. At the same time, the emergence
of the first professional teams led to inevitable scandals involving recruitment
and subsidies for student-athletes. Revelations of illicit aid to athletes
in the 1930s led to failed attempts at reform by the fledgling NCAA in
the postwar "Sanity Code," intended to control abuses by permitting limited
subsidies to college players but which actually paved the way for the "free
ride" many players receive today.
Watterson also explains how the growth of TV revenue led to college
football programs' unprecedented prosperity, just as the rise of professional
football seemed to relegate college teams to "minor league" status. He
explores issues of gender and race, from the shocked reactions of spectators
to the first female cheerleaders in the 1930s to their successful exploitation
by Roone Arledge three decades later. He describes the role of African-American
players, from the days when Southern schools demanded all-white teams (and
Northern schools meekly complied); through the black armbands and protests
of the 60s; to one of the game's few successful, if limited, reforms, as
black athletes dominate the playing field while often being shortchanged
in the classroom.
Today, Watterson observes, colleges' insatiable hunger for revenues
has led to an abuse-filled game nearly indistinguishable from the professional
model of the NFL. After examining the standard solutions for reform, he
offers proposals of his own, including greater involvement by faculty,
trustees, and college presidents. Ultimately, however, Watterson concludes
that the history of college football is one in which the rules of the game
have changed, but those of human nature have not. |
| |
Bowled
Over: Big-Time College Football from the Sixties to the BCS Era
by Michael Oriard
Hardcover from The University of North Carolina Press
Media Published: 2009-
ISBN: 0807833290
In this compellingly argued and deeply personal book, respected sports
historian Michael Oriard--who was himself a former second-team All-American
at Notre Dame--explores a wide range of trends that have changed the face
of big-time college football and transformed the role of the student-athlete.
Oriard considers such issues as the politicization of football in the
1960s and the implications of the integration of college football. The
heart of the book examines a handful of decisions by the NCAA in the early
seventies--to make freshmen eligible to play, to lower admission standards,
and, most critically, to replace four-year athletic scholarships with one-year
renewable scholarships--that helped transform student-athletes into athlete-students
and turned the college game into a virtual farm league for professional
football.
Oriard then traces the subsequent history of the sport as it has tried
to grapple with the fundamental contradiction of college football as both
extracurricular activity and multi-billion-dollar mass entertainment. The
relentless necessity to pursue revenue, Oriard argues, undermines attempts
to maintain academic standards, and it fosters a football culture in which
athletes are both excessively entitled and exploited.
As a former college football player, Oriard brings a unique perspective
to his topic, and his sympathies are always with the players and for the
game. This original and compelling study will interest everyone concerned
about the future of college football. |
| |
Bowls,
Polls, and Tattered Souls: Tackling the Chaos and Controversy That Reign
over College Football
by Stewart Mandel
Paperback from Wiley
Media Published: 2011-
ISBN: 0470373555
SI.com "College Football Mailbag" author Stewart Mandel tackles the
ten issues that confound college football fans--with a new chapter on the
2007 season
"An intricate tour through the ills of the college football world (and
there are many), but still manages to take on a breezy, airy tone."
----The Quad, NYTimes.com
"Stewart Mandel writes about college football's major controversies
with a wit and depth of knowledge that will impress even the most obsessed
fans. And because he's both fair and objective, there is something in this
book to infuriate nearly everyone."
----Warren St. John, author of the bestselling Rammer JammerYellow
Hammer: A Road Trip into the Heart of Fan Mania
"In a book dripping with sarcasm, Stewart Mandel plays tour guide on
an interesting ride through the college football nuthouse."
----Bruce Feldman, author of Meat Market and senior writer for ESPN
the Magazine
"If you're confused by the world of college football, particularly
the BCS and how the present polls are conducted, then I will recommend
to you Bowls, Polls & Tattered Souls."
----Football Outsiders
"Presents history and insights on all aspects of the sport, from recruiting
to the bowl system to why certain teams play in certain conferences. A
great read for fans with thirty days or thirty years of experience."
----Orlando Sentinel
If your heart beats faster on Saturday afternoons as your team takes
the field, this book will give you new insight into the fanaticism and
chaos that characterize college football today. Stewart Mandel takes a
provocative, hard-hitting look at the hot-button issues: the controversial
BCS; the polls and their largely arbitrary rankings; the ego-inflating
recruiting craze; cheating and recent scandals; the huge pressures and
salaries heaped on coaches; the Heisman hype-fest; the NFL draft; the clunky
conference expansions; privileged Notre Dame, college football's greatest
juggernaut; and the proliferation of bowl games. You'll get behind-the-scenes
insights on how the issues evolved and why some are almost impossible to
resolve in a book that's as entertaining, passionate, and thought-provoking
as the game itself. |
| |
The
USA TODAY College Football Encyclopedia: A Comprehensive Modern Reference
to America's Most Colorful Sport, 1953-Present
by Bob Boyles, Paul Guido
Paperback from Skyhorse Publishing
ISBN: 1616082259
"The biggest feast for the college football fan ever published."--Newark
Star-Ledger
The result of fifteen years of exhaustive research, The USA TODAY
College Football Encyclopedia is without question the most comprehensive
resource on college football ever set to type. Authors Bob Boyles and Paul
Guido watched thousands of hours of game films, and read through just about
every book ever published on the game to bring this massive reference to
fruition. In these pages you will find information unavailable in any other
single publication:
· Recaps of more than 8,000 games
· Detailed reviews of more than fifty-seven college football
seasons
· Complete season-by-season lineups and records of more than
seventy major programs
· Personality profiles of some of the game's biggest stars and
coaches
· Season-by-season award winners, All-American teams, polls,
and NFL drafts
The book also includes the authors' own College Football Performance
Formula, a three-leveled calculation developed to measure the achievement
of every team's season since 1953. that permits readers to compare teams
within a given season and to compare teams from different seasons.
Updated through the 2011 NFL Draft, The USA TODAY College Football
Encyclopedia is a unique book that all true fans of college football
should have on their shelves. Co-op available · |
| |
Three
and Out: Rich Rodriguez and the Michigan Wolverines in the Crucible of
College Football
by John U. Bacon
Hardcover from Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Media Published: 2011-
ISBN: 0809094665
Three and Out tells the story
of how college football's most influential coach took over the nation's
most successful program, only to produce three of the worst seasons in
the histories of both Rich Rodriguez and the University of Michigan. Shortly
after his controversial move from West Virginia, where he had just taken
his alma mater to the #1 ranking for the first time in school history,
Coach Rich Rodriguez granted author and journalist John U. Bacon unrestricted
access to Michigan's program. Bacon saw it all, from the meals and the
meetings, to the practices and the games, to the sidelines and the locker
rooms. Nothing and no one was off limits. John U. Bacon's Three and
Out is the definitive account of a football marriage seemingly made
in heaven that broke up after just three years, and lifts the lid on the
best and the worst of college football. |
| |
The
Assembly Line
by Milt Tenopir, Tom Osborne
(Paperback)
Backyard
Brawl: Inside the Blood Feud Between Texas and Texas A & M
by W. K. Stratton
(Hardcover)
Bowl
Games: College Football's Greatest Tradition
by Robert M. Ours
Hardcover from Westholme Publishing
The
Crimson Tide: An Illustrated History of Football at the University of Alabama
by Winston Groom
(Hardcover)
Destiny's
Dogs: Georgia's Championship Season
by Mark Schlabach, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
(Paperback)
Echoes
of Notre Dame Football: Great and Memorable Moments of the Fighting Irish
(with 2 audio CDs)
by Joe Garner, et al
(Hardcover)
Fighting
Irish : The Myth, The Magic and the Mystique of Notre Dame Football
by Ron Smith, Joe Hoppel, The Sporting News
Hardcover from McGraw-Hill/Contemporary Distributed Products
Forty-Seven
Straight: The Wilkinson Era at Oklahoma
by Harold Keith
Paperback from Univ of Oklahoma Pr (Trd)
Friday
Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream
by H. G. Bissinger, Rob, Jr. Clark
Secular religions are fascinating in the devotion and zealousness they
breed, and in Texas, high school football has its own rabid hold over the
faithful. H.G. Bissinger, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, enters into
the spirit of one of its most fervent shrines: Odessa, a city in decline
in the desert of West Texas, where the Permian High School Panthers have
managed to compile the winningest record in state annals. Indeed, as this
breathtaking examination of the town, the team, its coaches, and its young
players chronicles, the team, for better and for worse, is the town; the
communal health and self-image of the latter is directly linked to the
on-field success of the former. The 1988 season, the one Friday Night Lights
recounts, was not one of the Panthers' best. The game's effect on the community--and
the players--was explosive. Written with great style and passion, Friday
Night Lights offers an American snapshot in deep focus; the picture is
not always pretty, but the image is hard to forget. Amazon.com
Paperback from DaCapo Press
|
| |
I
Ain't Never Been Nothing but a Winner: Coach Paul "Bear" Bryant's 323 Greatest
Quotes About Success, on and Off the Football Field
by Paul W. Bryant, et al
(Hardcover)
Ohio
State's Unforgettables
by Bruce Hooley
(Hardcover)
Ohio
State '68: All the Way to the Top: The Story of Ohio State's Undefeated
Run to the Undisputed 1968 National Football Championship
by Steve Greenberg, Larry Zelina
(Hardcover)
Quotable
Rockne: Words of Wit, Wisdom & Motivation by and About Knute Rockne,
Legendary Notre Dame Football Coach (Potent Quotables)
by John Heisler, Knute Rockne
(Hardcover)
Horns,
Hogs, and Nixon Coming
by Terry Frei
The story of the memorable 1969 college football match between Texas
and Arkansas.
(Hardcover)
Personal
Foul: Coach Joe Moore vs. The University of Notre Dame
by Richard Lieberman
(Hardcover)
Quotable Woody: The Wit, Will, and Wisdom of Woody Hayes, College Football's
Most Fiery Championship Coach (Potent Quotables)
by Monte Carpenter, Woody Hayes
(Hardcover)
Out of Print - Try Used
Books
The
Road to Glory
by Josh Heupel, et al
(Paperback)
Rites
of Autumn: The Story of College Football
by Richard Whittingham, Roger Staubach
Rites of Autumn: The Story of College Football, the companion
book to the ESPN series of the same name, is an attractive, broad, yet
detailed history of college football, from the first game through the latest
bowl victories. Not only does author Richard Whittingham include comprehensive
rankings of the top teams, players, and coaches throughout the last century-plus
(such as Heisman Trophy winners or the greatest team rivalries), he highlights
the choice games and plays, as well as the coaches and gridiron legends
that have put their indelible stamp on this truly American sport. Amazon.com
Hardcover - 297 pages (September 25, )
Free Press; ISBN: 0743222199 |
| |
Sooner
Century: 100 Glorious Years of Oklahoma Football
by J. Brent Clark, et al
Hardcover: ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.94 x 12.35 x 9.43
Publisher: Quality Sports Publications;
ISBN: 1885758049
Sports
Illustrated: The College Football Book
by Editors of Sports Illustrated
Hardcover from Sports Illustrated
ISBN: 1603200339
Continuing its series of spectacular coffee-table books for the holiday
season, Sports Illustrated presents The College Football Book, the ultimate
gift for America`s most passionate fans. SI launched this series in 2005
with The Football Book, devoted to the professional game. A New York Times
best-seller that year, the book has taken root as a perennial, selling
more than 200,000 copies to date. Now the editors of Sports Illustrated
return to the gridiron, this time to serve the most avid football fans
of all. With the best words and pictures SI has to offer, The College Football
Book, brings to life the game`s unparalleled excitement and pageantry,
its legendary players, historic teams and epic rivalries. In 288 pages
of the greatest photography and writing available anywhere, The College
Football Book spans the sport`s history, from its infancy in the 1800s
right up to the postseason showdowns of 2008. The book is packed with stunning
pictures, award-winning stories, original stats, decade-by-decade all-star
teams and iconic artifacts photographed exclusively for this book at the
College Football Hall of Fame--the same exciting mix of elements that makes
each book in the SI series a must-have for sports fan. |
| |
The
Sweet Season: A Sportswriter Rediscovers Football, Family, and a Bit of
Faith at Minnesota's St. John's University
by Austin Murphy
(Hardcover)
Tales
from Michigan Stadium
by Jim Brandstatter
Book Description: - Tales from Michigan Stadium takes you behind
the scenes for some of the great moments in University of Michigan Football
history. From "Kip" Taylor, who scored the first touchdown at Michigan
Stadium in the late '20s, to Lloyd Carr, the Wolverines' current head coach,
you'll get details of the stories you've heard about, and some that you
haven't. Players who knew Yost, Oosterbaan, Crisler, Elliott, and Schembechler
tell their stories about practice, famous plays, and games from one of
the most tradition-rich football programs in collegiate history
Hardcover: 224 pages ; Dimensions (in inches): 0.81 x
8.52 x 6.02
Sports Publishing, Inc.; ISBN: 1582613532;
Tales
from the Missouri Tigers
by Alan Goforth
Hardcover from Sports Publishing, Inc.
Talking
Irish: The Oral History of Notre Dame Football
by Steve Delsohn
(Paperback)
True
Blue: The Carm Cozza Story
by Carm Cozza, et al
(Hardcover)
The
Undefeated: The Oklahoma Sooners and the Greatest Winning Streak in College
Football
by Jim Dent
(Hardcover)
Undefeated,
Untied, and Uninvited
by Kristine Setting Clark
(Hardcover)
Greatest Moments in Iowa Hawkeyes Football History
by Mark Dukes, et al
(Hardcover)
Out of Print - Try Used
Books
Touchdown : The New Approach to Scholarships and the College Football
Decision
by Ed Locker, Donald Zoloty
(Paperback)
Out of Print - Try Used
Books
»Browse
College & University Football
|
