American Football

Long before their first Super Bowl victory in 2003, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers did something no NFL team had ever done before and that none will ever likely do again: They lost 26 games in a row. It started in 1976, in their first season as an expansion team, and it lasted until the penultimate game of the 1977 season, when they defeated Archie Manning and the New Orleans Saints on the road. It was the beginning of a new streak for a team that had come to be called "The Yucks".

Several years after his playing career was cut short by injury before it had a chance to really begin, John Madden was hired as an assistant coach by the Oakland Raiders, one of professional football's most iconoclastic franchises. Two years later he was named the team's head coach and proceeded to lead the Raiders to five championship games in his first seven seasons. Following years of heartbreaking losses in some of history's most memorable games.

In an increasingly secular, fragmented, and distracted culture, nothing brings Americans together quite like sports. On Sundays in September, more families worship at the altar of the NFL than at any church. This appeal, which cuts across all demographic and ideological lines, makes sports perhaps the last unifying mass ritual of our era, with huge numbers of people all focused on the same thing at the same moment. That timeless, live quality makes sports very powerful, and very lucrative. And the media spectacle around them is only getting bigger, brighter, and noisier.

To borrow the slogan offered over the Bryant-Denny Stadium public address system before the start of every Alabama home game, "This is Alabama football." Ask a fan to talk about his favorite game and he’ll probably answer, "Which season?" Ask another to describe his favorite Crimson Tide play, and he may also respond the same way. And if asking an Alabama fan to recall his favorite player, don’t be surprised if you are asked to be more specific: "Which year? Which game? Which position?" Such is the tradition and legacy of the program.

Auburn Tigers football legends recall their greatest moments - newly updated to include the Tigers' recent BCS championship. What creates a championship team? Spirit, determination, and a legacy that refuses to die. Game of My Life: Auburn Tigers is a collection of the greatest Tigers moments from past and present as seen through the eyes of the players themselves. In this vivid collection of sports moments, Mark Murphy has brought together passionate Auburn football players to share their fondest experiences and memories.

From junior high football games to the Sugar Bowl with a national championship up for grabs, Mike Liner has seen it all in football. President and CEO of a bank by day, Liner has been a Texas football official on Fridays and Saturdays for the past 35 years. It’s Not All Black and White offers a view of college football seen through a different set of eyes, the eyes of an official. Liner takes listeners through the story of his ascension up the officiating hierarchy and describes the bumps in the road he encountered along the way.

Since their founding in 1919, the Chicago Bears have carried the hearts and souls of football fans throughout the country. Now supporters of one of the NFL’s most storied franchises will go into the locker room and onto the turf with over 20 Bears legends in Game of My Life: Chicago Bears. In this newly revised edition, sportswriter Lew Freedman opens the doors to players’ private remembrances of how it was and how they reacted to the spotlight. Big touchdowns, career-making moments, and championship glory.

Penn State fans will finally get the chance to walk onto the field with their favorite Nittany Lions in Game of My Life Penn State Nittany Lions. In this newly updated edition, Penn State alum Jordan Hyman asks over 20 of the school’s greatest football legends to share their favorite memories and most poignant moments while wearing the white and blue. A must-listen for any Nittany Lions fan.

Relive the greatest Giants moments through the eyes of the players themselves - newly revised to include Super Bowl XLVI! The New York Giants have long been one of the NFL’s most popular and storied franchises. Now fans of this dynamic football powerhouse will relive all the greatest gridiron moments through the eyes of the players themselves in this newly updated edition of Game of My Life New York Giants.

For the first time ever, legends of the Longhorns share their greatest football moments. How did Earl Campbell prove that he was worthy of the Heisman? How did a Snickers bar help convince Ricky Williams to return to Texas for his senior year? What was Vince Young really thinking just before the 2006 Rose Bowl? In Game of My Life: Texas Longhorns, fans will find the answers to these questions and many more as 20 of the greatest players relive the moment that shaped their college football career.

In Game of My Life: Florida Gators, listeners will step onto the field and re-live the greatest football moments through the eyes of 30 of the most famous Gators players. In this enthralling collection, Pat Dooley brings together Florida football players of the past and present to share their fondest single game experience and memories - some involve championship games, while others seem ordinary save for the extraordinary personal meaning.

Tom Berthel first met Hall of Fame football coach Hayden Fry when, in the mid-1980s, his investment firm, Berthel Fisher & Co., became a corporate sponsor of the University of Iowa Athletic Department. This business partnership not only helped Berthel Fisher establish a winning public image, but it also gave birth to one of the most important and enduring friendships of Tom Berthel’s life.

This is the story of Ohio State's undefeated run to the 1968 national championship. For Ohio State football loyalists, there hasn't been a time like the 1968 season. In '68, OSU completed a 10-0-0 sweep, won the Rose Bowl over O.J. Simpson and Southern Cal, and finished as the national champion. It was a team of household names for Ohio State fans: Kern, Brockington, Otis, Tatum, Hayden, Stillwagon, Gillian, Provost, Polaski, Foley, Worden, Adams, White, Whitfield, Jankowski, Long, Maciejowski, and Zelina.

A continuing and ongoing drama, LSU football has been marked by a string of improbable victories and sometimes valiant defeas. Game Of My Life LSU Tigers is the chronicle of over 30 of the greatest players as they tell the story of the game that meant it all. Marty Mul has compiled the vivid and poignant single-game stories from three dozen of the most remembered Tiger games of the last eight decades. Readers will relive the fingertip catches, the bone-crunching hits, and epic touchdowns through the eyes - and from the memories - of the LSU players themselves.

During his nearly 50 years of sportswriting, including 28 at Sports Illustrated, fans of Dr. Z came to expect a certain alchemical, trademark blend. Paul Zimmerman is one of the modern era's groundbreaking football minds, a man who methodically charted every play while generating copious notes, a human precursor to the data analytics websites of today. In 2008, Zimmerman had nearly completed work on his personal memoirs when a series of strokes left him largely unable to speak, read, or write. Compiled and edited by Peter King, these are the stories he still wants to see told.

This amazing memoir follows the story of Reggie Williams - ex-NFL linebacker, former Disney executive, renaissance man, and the epitome of determination in the face of extreme challenges.

Endzone tells the story of how college football's most successful and respected program nearly lost it all in less than a decade and entirely of its own doing. It is a story of hubris, greed, and betrayal, a tale more suited to Wall Street than the world's top public university.

A brief introduction to the game of football as intended to be played by children.

According to investigative journalist Dan E. Moldea, for decades the National Football League has had a strong and unspoken understanding with a dangerous institution: Organized crime. In his classic expos, Interference, Moldea bares the dark, sordid underbelly of America's favorite professional team sport, revealing a nest of corruption that the league has largely ignored since its inception.

From the day Princeton played the first intercollegiate game in 1869, these major schools of the northeast - Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale - shaped football as we now know it. In this rich history, Bernstein shows that much of the culture that surrounds American football, both good and bad, has its roots in the Ivy League.