English Football History

Against the backdrop of the call to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, the National Women’s Football League was founded as something of a gimmick. However, their star team, the Toledo Troopers, emerged to challenge traditional gender roles and amass a win-loss record never before or since achieved in American football. The players were housewives, factory workers, hairdressers, former nuns, high school teachers, bartenders, mail carriers, pilots, and would-be drill sergeants. Most of all, they were athletes who had been denied the opportunity to play a game they were born to play.

Randall Balmer was a late convert to sports talk radio, but he quickly became addicted, just like millions of other devoted American sports fans. As a historian of religion, the more he listened, Balmer couldn't help but wonder how the fervor he heard related to religious practice. From baseball to basketball and football to ice hockey, Balmer explores the origins and histories of big-time sports from the late nineteenth century to the present, with entertaining anecdotes and fresh insights into their ties to religious life.

The Forgotten First chronicles the lives of four incredible men, the racism they experienced as Black players entering a segregated sport, the burden of expectation they carried, and their many achievements, which would go on to affect football for generations to come.

Professional football today is an $8 billion sports entertainment industry - and the most popular spectator sport in America, with designs on expansion across the globe. In this astute field-level view of the National Football League since 1960, Michael Oriard looks closely at the development of the sport and at the image of the NFL and its unique place in American life.

The stunning victory of the upstart New York Jets over the stalwart Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III transformed the NFL and established the Super Bowl as America s premier sporting event. While attending a banquet at the Miami Touchdown Club honoring his selection as the AFL s MVP, the brash Joe Nameth guaranteed a Jets victory in the forthcoming Super Bowl III and invoked a maelstrom of media attention.

Soccer has been the world’s most popular sport for the last century, and an irresistible game for political and social leaders seeking shortcuts to the hearts of their people. Sometimes it worked, momentarily, but as renowned sports journalist Luciano Wernicke writes in this fascinating and original audiobook, the game and its glories have survived them all.

What is a bravey? For Alexi Pappas, it means to chase the goals that seem scary. She has not shied away from the challenge. In this honest and hopeful memoir written especially for young listeners, Alexi Pappas details key moments that had profound effects on her life, including the loss of her mother when she was just four years old, to her formative years at school where she felt different from her peers, and into her young adult life, including the incredible year she experienced in 2016 when she made her Olympic debut as a distance runner.

From the Super Bowl to the Thanksgiving game, millions of families gather throughout the week to watch their favorite teams duke it out. Kids and grandparents alike share the thrill of watching their team get that perfect tackle or last-minute save. Now you have the opportunity to share the history of the sport with your kids with one engaging guide. 210.2 million people follow the NBA league across its various social media platforms, making it the most popular sports league in the world. So why is it that no one really understands its history?

Marion Motley was recognized as one of the gridiron's most outstanding players when he was enshrined into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1968. His legacy as one of four Black players to reintegrate pro football in 1946 helped blaze a path for Black athletes in the highest echelons of professional sports. This book tells Motley's story of adversity, personal tragedy, and triumphs using archival interviews and new interviews with historians, friends, and descendants.

On November 23, 1968, near the end of a turbulent and memorable year, there was a football game that would also prove turbulent and memorable: the season-ending clash between Harvard and Yale. Both teams entered undefeated and, technically at least, came out undefeated. The final score was 29-29. To some of the players on the field, it was a triumph; to others a tragedy. George Howe Colt’s The Game is the story of that iconic American year, as seen through the young men who lived it and were changed by it.

There are certain moments that simply transcend sports. They become larger than life and bigger than anyone ever thought possible, leaping off the field, the court, or the diamond and into the annals of not only history, but the very fabric of the American milieu. We all just witnessed such a moment on February 5th, 2017, when the New England Patriots battled back from the largest deficit in Super Bowl history to once again become world champions and secure Tom Brady’s legacy as the greatest quarterback of all time.

As Britain takes its first steps outside EU jurisdiction, how will football clubs adjust? With the FA keen on tournament success, the FA Youth Cup will play a key role in bringing academy products to prominence. Since 1952, the trophy changed hands every season bar one, with the likes of Crystal Palace, Millwall, Leeds United, and Manchester City lighting up the tournament with superstar teams. From Kids to Champions tells the stories of players who didn't make it at the top level, or left the game disillusioned, along with those of the important coaches and academy directors.

That afternoon was the last time the high-school Patriots would see one another for weeks; some teammates they'd never see again. Hurricane Katrina was about to tear their lives apart. Hurricane Season is the story of a great football coach, his team, his family, and their school - and a remarkable fight back from shocking tragedy.

The World Cup is international soccer's championship tournament, and it rules the global sports stage. Award-winning author Matt Doeden explores the history of international soccer and covers the World Cup's greatest moments, from the Save of the Century to Diego Maradona's Hand of God goal to the United States Women's National Team's dominance. The most shocking goals, the greatest upsets, and the fun and fanfare of soccer's biggest event are all here.

In the long annals of sports and crime, no story compares to the one that engulfed the Luckman family in 1935. As 18-year-old Sid Luckman made headlines across New York City for his high school football exploits at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, his father, Meyer Luckman, was making headlines in the same papers for a very different reason: the gangland murder of his own brother-in-law. Amazingly, the connection between sports celebrity son and mobster father was studiously ignored by the press and ultimately overlooked for eight decades.

Goal! covers the history of the beautiful game from its origins in English public schools in the early 19th century to its current role as a crucial element of a globalized entertainment industry.

The most popular college football team in the early 20th century belonged to an institution called the Carlisle Indian Industrial School. Its story begins with Lt. Col. Richard Henry Pratt, a fierce abolitionist who believed that Native Americans deserved a place in American society. In 1879, Pratt made a treacherous journey to the Dakota Territory to recruit Carlisle's first students. Years later, three students approached Pratt with the notion of forming a football team.

In The First Star, acclaimed sports writer Lars Anderson recounts the thrilling story of Harold "Red" Grange, the Galloping Ghost of the gridiron, and the wild barnstorming tour that earned professional football a place in the American sporting firmament.

On December 28, 1958, the New York Giants and Baltimore Colts met under the lights of Yankee Stadium for that season's NFL Championship game. Football was still greatly over-shadowed by the country's favored pastime - baseball - but the 1958 championship proved to be the turning point for pro football.

On the field and roaming the sidelines were 17 future Hall of Famers, including Colts stars Johnny Unitas, Raymond Berry, and Gino Marchetti, and Giants greats Frank Gifford, Sam Huff, and assistant coaches Vince Lombardi and Tom Landry.

The Best Game Ever is a brilliant portrait of how a single game changed the history of American sports.

The exciting story of one of the fastest growing sports in the world, played by over 30 million girls and women. Over 25 million people tuned in for the Americans' 2015 Women's World Cup final victory - the most-watched football match in United States history. The Making of the Women's World Cup details the most incredible tales from previous Women's World Cups.